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Evaluation of Fire Danger and Fire Potential Indices for South Africa : case studies in Mpumalanga and the Western Cape
Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2017.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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University of Pretoria
2017
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| _version_ | 1867613523063865344 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author2 | Coetzee, Serena Martha |
| author_browse | Coetzee, Serena Martha |
| author_facet | Coetzee, Serena Martha |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | © 2017 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
| description | Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2017. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/63222 |
| institution | University of Pretoria (South Africa) |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:37:29.889Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publishDateRange | 2017 |
| publishDateSort | 2017 |
| publisher | University of Pretoria |
| publisherStr | University of Pretoria |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| spelling | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/63222 Evaluation of Fire Danger and Fire Potential Indices for South Africa : case studies in Mpumalanga and the Western Cape Coetzee, Serena Martha u10024167@tuks.co.za Frost, Philip McFerren, Graeme A. Burgess, Melissa UCTD Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2017. Wildfires are a common phenomenon on earth and can have disastrous effects on the environment, infrastructure and surrounding communities. At the same time, many ecosystems are fire prone and require burning at regular intervals, in order to maintain the health of the ecosystems. It is necessary to minimise the negative effects of fires where possible. Information needs to be provided to fire management officials to facilitate efficient planning and mitigation in order to minimise the negative effects. Wildfires are influenced by many variables including vegetation type, fuel load, fuel moisture, proximity to roads, proximity to settlements, elevation, slope, aspect, temperature, precipitation, wind and relative humidity. These variables can be used to build a fire potential index that determines the probability of a fire occurrence and the possibility of the fire to become an out of control fire. Fire potential indices provide information on where fire potential is high so fire management officials can plan resources accordingly and thus minimise negative impacts of wildfires. Many fire potential indices have been developed but their usefulness in South Africa has not been verified. The aim of the research was to implement and evaluate different fire potential indices utilising geographic information, including remote sensing products, to predict fire potential in South Africa. The Mpumalanga and the Western Cape provinces were used as case studies. The time periods included February to December 2015 for Mpumalanga and August 2014 to June 2015 for the Western Cape. A number of candidate fire potential indices were implemented in the Python scripting language. A variety of data sources were used to implement the fire potential indices. The fire potential indices were evaluated along with a few fire danger indices. The performance evaluation compared satellite detected active fire events to the fire potential indices in the study areas based on statistical metrics including Pseudo R2, C-Index, Eastaugh’s Two-Part Parametric, Bhattacharyya Coefficient and Percentile Shift. The evaluation was performed per pixel for the entire date range. A performance ranking was then calculated for all the indices based on the pixel performance and a final ranking was assigned to each index. The Fire Potential Index performed best amongst the implemented candidate fire potential indices. The Canadian Fire Weather Index performed well in Mpumalanga and the Fine Fuel Moisture Code performed well in the Western Cape. The overall performance of the indices was not very high. This is due to the fact that even though fire potential is high in an area, an ignition source might not be present to cause an actual fire event. The performance of fire potential indices and fire danger indices were different in the two provinces. Future work can be done to develop an index based on South African conditions or calibrate the indices implemented in this research for an area. Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology MSc Unrestricted 2017-11-20T10:12:08Z 2017-11-20T10:12:08Z 2017 2017 Dissertation Burgess, M 2017, Evaluation of Fire Danger and Fire Potential Indices for South Africa : case studies in Mpumalanga and the Western Cape, MSc Dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd <http://hdl.handle.net/2263/63222> S2017 http://hdl.handle.net/2263/63222 en © 2017 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. application/pdf University of Pretoria |
| spellingShingle | UCTD Evaluation of Fire Danger and Fire Potential Indices for South Africa : case studies in Mpumalanga and the Western Cape |
| title | Evaluation of Fire Danger and Fire Potential Indices for South Africa : case studies in Mpumalanga and the Western Cape |
| title_full | Evaluation of Fire Danger and Fire Potential Indices for South Africa : case studies in Mpumalanga and the Western Cape |
| title_fullStr | Evaluation of Fire Danger and Fire Potential Indices for South Africa : case studies in Mpumalanga and the Western Cape |
| title_full_unstemmed | Evaluation of Fire Danger and Fire Potential Indices for South Africa : case studies in Mpumalanga and the Western Cape |
| title_short | Evaluation of Fire Danger and Fire Potential Indices for South Africa : case studies in Mpumalanga and the Western Cape |
| title_sort | evaluation of fire danger and fire potential indices for south africa case studies in mpumalanga and the western cape |
| topic | UCTD |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/2263/63222 |