Spatial modelling and mapping of urban fire occurrence in Portugal

Fires continue to be a leading cause of property damage, psychological effects, physical damage and death in modern society. Since 43% of Portuguese population lives in urban areas, these numbers potentially carry severe consequences. In literature, several approaches are used to predict and model fire occurrences. Regardless the approach, most studies emphasize the need to consider spatial techniques to model urban fire occurrences. Spatial econometric models may present benefits as they offer the possibility to consider spatial autocorrelation either in the response variable, the explanatory variables and/or the random error terms. Hence, this research aims at modelling urban fire occurrences while making a comparative analysis of different strategies to account for spatial autocorrelation. In addition, we intend to identify factors that explain the relationship between fire events and the urban pattern. Ultimately, we seek to map the probability of urban fires occurrence in Portugal.

To the best of our knowledge this is the first study that models the urban fire incidence using spatial modelling techniques in relation to socio-economic characteristics on a global spatial scale in Portugal. We conclude suggesting that spatial analytical techniques should be further applied in main districts to explore local dynamics and model the relationship with social-economic and -demographic features on a micro-level fire incident data.