@article{ref1,
title="Empirical evidence of reduced wildfire ignition risk in the presence of strong winds",
journal="Fire (Basel, Switzerland)",
year="2023",
author="Shmuel, Assaf and Heifetz, Eyal",
volume="6",
number="9",
pages="e338-e338",
abstract="Anyone who has tried lighting a campfire on a windy day can appreciate how difficult it could be. However, despite real-life experience and despite laboratory experiments which have demonstrated that fire ignition risk dramatically decreases beyond a certain wind threshold, current fire weather indices (FWIs) do not take this effect into account and assume a monotonic relation between wind velocity and ignition risk. In this paper, we perform a global analysis which empirically quantifies the probability of ignition as a function of wind velocity. Using both traditional methods (a logistic regression and a generalized additive model) and machine learning techniques, we find that beyond a threshold of approximately 3-4 m/s, the ignition risk substantially decreases. The effect holds when accounting for additional factors such as temperature and relative humidity. We recommend updating FWIs to account for this issue.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="2571-6255",
doi="10.3390/fire6090338",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/fire6090338"
}