A spatio-temporal Poisson hurdle point process to model wildfires

• DOI: 10.1007/s00477-013-0823-x
• Publication Date: 2013-11-13T08:52:47Z
• Authors: Laura Serra; Marc Saez; Pablo Juan; Diego Varga; Jorge Mateu
• Keywords: Statistics; Estadística; Hurdle model; Wildfire; 15. Life on land; Econometric models; 01 natural sciences; Spatio-temporal point processes; 13. Climate action; INLA; Forest fires -- Prevention and control; Models economètrics; Incendis forestals -- Prevenció i control; SPDE; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Wildfires have been studied in many ways, for instance as a spatial point pattern or through modeling the size of fires or the relative risk of big fires. Lately a large variety of complex statistical models can be fitted routinely to complex data sets, in particular wildfires, as a result of widely accessible high-level statistical software, such as R. The objective in this paper is to model the occurrence of big wildfires (greater than a given extension of hectares) using an adapted two-part econometric model, specifically a hurdle model. The methodology used in this paper is useful to determine those factors that help any fire to become a big wildfire. Our proposal and methodology can be routinely used to contribute to the management of big wildfires