Forest fire risk assessment using WLC and ANP (Case study: 33 and 34 watersheds north of Iran)

Forest fires are a major environmental problem that led to the economic and environmental damages. Forest fires are one of the environmental hazards in Iran. Naturally, it is impossible to control the forest fires. By the use of forest fire risk maps, we can identify the areas with high risk of fire and reduce the fires as well as possible. Preparing the map of forest fire risk areas as a strategy is necessary for protecting the forests against fire. In this paper, in order to prepare the forest fire risk zoning, at first the effective criteria’s and indices are identified by Delphi technique, and all of the criteria’s and the indexes were normalized by Fuzzy logic. And also the weights of criteria prepared with Analytical Network Process, then by using GIS system and integrating it with Weighted Linear Combination methods (WLC) the map of zonation of the forest fire risk in the study area was carried out. To assess the accuracy of the evaluation, the results obtained from the study were compared with the past year's fire history data of studied area. This was done using the Kappa coefficient test. The results of the comparison indicated that the prepared map has 90% accuracy for Kappa coefficient test.This result showed that the prepared map had high accuracy and efficacy.