PRIORITIZATION OF FOREST FIRE HAZARD RISK SIMULATION USING HYBRID GREY RELATIVITY ANALYSIS (HGRA) AND FUZZY ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS (FAHP) COUPLED WITH MULTICRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS (MCDA) TECHNIQUES – A COMPARATIVE STUDY ANALYSIS

Abstract

Forests are important dynamic systems which are widely attracted by wild fires worldwide. Due to the complexity and non-linearity of the causative forest fire problems, employing sophisticated hybrid evolutionary algorithms is a logical task to achieve a reliable approximation of this environmental threats. This estimate will provide the outline of priority areas for preventing activities and allocation of fire fighters’ stations, seeking to minimize possible damages caused by fires. This study aims at prioritizing the forest fire risk of Wassa West district of Ghana. The study considered static causative factors such as Land use and land cover (which include forest, built-ups and settlement areas), slope, aspect, linear features (water bodies and roads) and dynamic causative factors such as wind speed, precipitation, and temperature were used. The methods employed include a Hybrid Grey Relativity Analysis (HGRA) and Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) techniques. The fuzzy sets integrated with AHP in a decision-making algorithm using geographic information system (GIS) was used to model the fire risk in the study area. FAHP and HGRA methods were used for estimating the importance (weights) of the effective factors in forest fire modelling. Based on their modelling methods, the expert ideas were used to express the relative importance and priority of the major criteria and sub-criteria in forest fire risk in the study area. The expert ideas were analyzed based on FAHP and HGRA. The major criteria models and fire risk model were presented based on these FAHP and HGRA weights. On the other hand, the spatial data of the sub criteria were provided and assembled in GIS environment to obtain the sub-criteria maps. Each sub-criterion map was converted to raster format and it was reclassified based on risks of its classes to fire occurrence. The maps of each major criterion were obtained by weighted overlay of its sub criteria maps considering to major criterion model in GIS environment. Finally, the map of fire risk was obtained by weighted overlay of major criteria maps considering to fire risk model in GIS. The results showed that the FAHP model showed superiority than HGRA in prioritizing forest fire risk of the study area in terms of statistical analysis with a standard deviation of 0.09277 m as compared to 0.1122 m respectively. The obtained fire risk map can be used as a decision support system for predicting of the future trends in the study area. The optimized structures of the proposed models could serve as a good alternative to traditional forest predictive models, and this can be a promisingly testament used for future planning and decision making in the proposed areas.