TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2023//
TI  - Empirical evidence of reduced wildfire ignition risk in the presence of strong winds
JO  - Fire (Basel, Switzerland)
A1  - Shmuel, Assaf
A1  - Heifetz, Eyal
SP  - e338
EP  - e338
VL  - 6
IS  - 9
N2  - 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>
LA  - en
SN  - 2571-6255
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/fire6090338
ID  - ref1
ER  -