Spatial Analysis, Interactive Visualisation and GIS-Based Dashboard for Monitoring Spatio-Temporal Changes of Hotspots of Bushfires over 100 Years in New South Wales, Australia
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- Is there a change in the pattern of bushfires in NSW over time?
- Are areas of prescribed burns negatively correlated to areas where bushfires have occurred, i.e., do prescribed burns help to reduce bushfire risk?
- Is the frequency of bushfires spatially clustered over time? Did these clusters change over the 2019–2020 bushfire season?
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Study Area
2.2. Data
2.3. Pre-Processing of Data and Data Analysis
2.3.1. Change in Bushfire Trends over Time
2.3.2. Correlation between Bushfires and Prescribed Burns
2.3.3. GIS Dashboard and Interactive Plots
2.4. Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Fires
2.4.1. Hotspot Analysis
2.4.2. Emerging HotSpot Analysis
3. Results
3.1. Increase in Fires over Time
3.2. Pearson’s Correlation between Bushfires and Prescribed Burns
3.3. Spatial Clustering of Bushfire Frequency
3.3.1. All Time Hotspot Analysis
3.3.2. Bushfire Frequency Hotspots between 2010–2020
3.4. Land Use in Hotspots
Bushfire Frequency Trends
3.5. Bushfire Dashboard
4. Discussion
- Lack of enough data before 1957.
- Low accuracy of the data relevant to the boundaries of the fires for early data in the century.
- Lack of provision of the intensity attribute for the fires (e.g., “light” fires in large areas compared to “intense” fires in small areas). Such intensity data can help to explore whether prescribed burns have reduced the fire intensity but not the area/frequency.
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A. The space-time cube logfile.
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Season | Mean Area Burnt (Hectares) |
---|---|
1974–1975 | 15,549 |
2019–2020 | 11,214 |
1969–1970 | 4027 |
1984–1985 | 3819 |
2002–2003 | 2296 |
1968–1969 | 2271 |
1977–1978 | 1887 |
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Visner, M.; Shirowzhan, S.; Pettit, C. Spatial Analysis, Interactive Visualisation and GIS-Based Dashboard for Monitoring Spatio-Temporal Changes of Hotspots of Bushfires over 100 Years in New South Wales, Australia. Buildings 2021, 11, 37. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11020037
Visner M, Shirowzhan S, Pettit C. Spatial Analysis, Interactive Visualisation and GIS-Based Dashboard for Monitoring Spatio-Temporal Changes of Hotspots of Bushfires over 100 Years in New South Wales, Australia. Buildings. 2021; 11(2):37. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11020037
Chicago/Turabian StyleVisner, Michael, Sara Shirowzhan, and Chris Pettit. 2021. "Spatial Analysis, Interactive Visualisation and GIS-Based Dashboard for Monitoring Spatio-Temporal Changes of Hotspots of Bushfires over 100 Years in New South Wales, Australia" Buildings 11, no. 2: 37. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11020037