Karen Short, environmental researcher at the forest service who contributed to the study and maintains a historic database of national reports on forest fires, says that it is essential to understand why they start to prevent them and educate the public. Strategic prevention seems to work: according to the National Fire Protection Association, house fires in the United States have decreased Almost half since the 1980s.
In 2024, Short widened its archives on forest fires to include more useful information to investigators, such as weather, altitude, population density and the moment of fire. “We must capture these elements in the data to be able to follow it over time. We have always been doing things since the 1900s, “she said.
According to Short, trends in forest fire in the western United States have changed with human activity. In recent decades, fires caused by power lines, fireworks and firearms have become more common, unlike fires caused by railways and sawmills that were once more common.
The study revealed that vehicles and equipment are probably the main managers, potentially causing 21 percent of forest fires without known cause since 1992. Last fall, the Fire at the airport In California, this is exactly what happened, burning more than 23,000 acres. And an increasing number of fires are the result of criminal fires or accident ignitions – whether it is due to smoke, gunshots or camp fires – which represent an additional 18 %. In 2017, the choice of an Arizona couple of a blue fireworks spanning smoke for a party revealing the sex of a baby illuminated the atmosphere. SawmillBuried nearly 47,000 acres.
But these results are not final. Automatic learning models such as those used for study are formed to predict the probability of a given fire cause, rather than proving that a particular fire has occurred. Although the study model has shown 90 % accuracy by choosing between lightning or human activity as a source of inflammation when it has been tested on fires whose causes are known, it has had more Difficulty determining exactly which of the 11 possible human behaviors were to be blamed, and only managed half of the time.
Yavar pourmohamad, data science researcher at the Boisse State University who directed the study, says that knowing the likely causes of a fire could help authorities to warn people in high risk areas before a fire does not declare itself. “It could give people an idea of what it is most important to pay attention,” he said. “Perhaps that in the future, AI can become a reliable tool for action in the real world.”
Synolakis, professor at the USC, says that research by Pourmohamad and Short is important to understand the evolution of risks. He recommends proactive actions such as the burial of electric lines underground, where they cannot be shaken by the winds.
A Study 2018 noted that the fires launched by electric lines fallen down, such as campfire in Paradise, California, the same year, were increasing. Although the authors note that even if the power lines are not responsible for many fires, they are associated with larger areas of burned land.
“We really have to make sure that our communities are more resilient to climate change,” said synolakis. “As we see with the extreme conditions in Los Angeles, the abolition of fires alone is not enough.”
