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Abstract
Fire Hazard GIS Modeling
Track: EMS, Fire, Disaster Management
Author(s): Andres Abeyta
In the Spring of 2001, IGIST received contract to perform several mapping tasks for the Municipality of Anchorage. The main products required were a landcover map and a Fire Hazard map of the Wildland/Urban Interface around the City of Anchorage. The amount of dead fuels within this area has changed drastically over the last decade as many of the mature Spruce trees have died due to the invasion of the Spruce Bark Beetle. The city desired an accurate way to delineate the geography of the Spruce Mortality so that plans can be made to effectively protect the population and industry that lies within the forest and city interface. These map products are to be used by multiple agencies including the Anchorage Fire Department, Department of Natural Resources, and Anchorage Soil and Water Conservation District.
The landcover project for vegetation classes was based on an unsupervised classification of a LandSAT TM August, 2000 image. Labels were determined using data from multiple resolutions. Several spatial models were incorporated to improve accuracy of the class labeling. A sampling scheme allowed for 400 points to be collected for landcover labels and accuracy assessment.
The classified image was then used as the central component in a spatial model to determine fire hazard. IGIST came up with a model that included seven key inputs: vegetation classification, slope, aspect, beetle spruce kill areas, distance to roads, distance to water, and population density. The output map is a ranking of vegetation classes and their respective numerical weights with respect to fire hazard. The model outputs were illustrate a successful exercise to combine many existing GIS layers with the new vegetation classification.
Andres Abeyta
Integrated GIS Technologies
5605 Adams Ave
San Diego , CA 92115
USA
Phone: 619-287-9922
Fax: 619-287-9944
E-mail: abeyta@igist.com