Estimation of Wildfire Hazard using Spatial-Temporal Fire History Data

The study of wildfire has long been important to the residents of Los Angeles County, California. Of particular interest is the risk of a location burning given the time since the location’s last burn. Previous authors have investigated the impact of fuel age on the susceptibility of different areas to burning using techniques which are not optimal in the case where detailed spatial and temporal information on fire history is available. Here, a new method is proposed for estimating wildfire hazard using spatial-temporal fire history data. We use this estimator to show that fuel age appears to have a nonlinear threshold-type relationship with fire hazard. Our estimator is shown to be more stable than previous estimators and to have good large sample properties.