Design of a Forest Fire Early Alert System through a Deep 3D-CNN Structure and a WRF-CNN Bias Correction

Abstract

Throughout the years, wildfires have negatively impacted ecological systems and urban areas. Hence, reinforcing territorial risk management strategies against wildfires is essential. In this study, we built an early alert system (EAS) with two different Machine Learning (ML) techniques to calculate the meteorological conditions of two Colombian areas: (i) A 3D convolutional neural net capable of learning from satellite data and (ii) a convolutional network to bias-correct the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model output. The results were used to quantify the daily Fire Weather Index and were coupled with the outcomes from a land cover analysis conducted through a Naïve-Bayes classifier to estimate the probability of wildfire occurrence. These results, combined with an assessment of global vulnerability in both locations, allow the construction of daily risk maps in both areas. On the other hand, a set of short-term preventive and corrective measures were suggested to public authorities to implement, after an early alert prediction of a possible future wildfire. Finally, Soil Management Practices are proposed to tackle the medium- and long-term causes of wildfire development, with the aim of reducing vulnerability and promoting soil protection. In conclusion, this paper creates an EAS for wildfires, based on novel ML techniques and risk maps.