Tropical Forest Fire Susceptibility Mapping at the Cat Ba National Park Area, Hai Phong City, Vietnam, Using GIS-Based Kernel Logistic Regression

The Cat Ba National Park area (Vietnam) with its tropical forest is recognized as being part of the world biodiversity conservation by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and is a well-known destination for tourists, with around 500,000 travelers per year. This area has been the site for many research projects; however, no project has been carried out for forest fire susceptibility assessment. Thus, protection of the forest including fire prevention is one of the main concerns of the local authorities. This work aims to produce a tropical forest fire susceptibility map for the Cat Ba National Park area, which may be helpful for the local authorities in forest fire protection management. To obtain this purpose, first, historical forest fires and related factors were collected from various sources to construct a GIS database. Then, a forest fire susceptibility model was developed using Kernel logistic regression. The quality of the model was assessed using the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve, area under the ROC curve (AUC), and five statistical evaluation measures. The usability of the resulting model is further compared with a benchmark model, the support vector machine (SVM). The results show that the Kernel logistic regression model has a high level of performance in both the training and validation dataset, with a prediction capability of 92.2%. Since the Kernel logistic regression model outperforms the benchmark model, we conclude that the proposed model is a promising alternative tool that should also be considered for forest fire susceptibility mapping in other areas. The results of this study are useful for the local authorities in forest planning and management.