Forest fire risk assessment combining remote sensing and meteorological information

Abstract

Based on fire susceptibility index (FSI), an improved index is developed. Improved fire susceptibility index (IFSI) considers both live fuel and dead fuel using remotely sensed data with meteorological data and is conducive to the normalisation of data processing or to multifactor analysis. The weights of IFSI between live fuel and dead fuel may be derived from a fuel type map by experience based on ground observation data. IFSI has been validated with fire potential index (FPI) using success-rate verification (SRV) method based on historical fire hotspot data. The forest fire prediction accuracy of IFSI is very close to that of FPI, FPI is better in low fire risk ranges and IFSI is better in high fire risk ranges. © 2007 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.