Developing and testing models of the drivers of anthropogenic and lightning-caused wildfire ignitions in south-eastern Australia

Abstract

Considerable investments are made in managing fire risk to human assets, including a growing use of fire behaviour simulation tools to allocate expenditure. Understanding fire risk requires estimation of the likelihood of ignition, spread of the fire and impact on assets. The ability to estimate and predict risk requires both the development of ignition likelihood models and the evaluation of these models in novel environments. We developed models for natural and anthropogenic ignitions in the south-eastern Australian state of Victoria incorporating variables relating to fire weather, terrain and the built environment. Fire weather conditions had a consistently positive effect on the likelih..