Statistical expressions on water based wildfire suppression in sweden, 1996–2011

Abstract

Little research has been conducted with respect to water requirements for wildfire suppression. An exploratory and robust regression analysis was conducted on statistical material extracted from a Swedish database, focusing on data related to the fire suppression. The variables included are the amount of water applied, application rate of water, extinguishing time, flame height, and the total fire area. The results of the analysis with potential relationships are described, discussed, and compared with results from earlier research. After initial outlier detection, a robust regression analysis was performed and relationships developed. It was found that the developed relationships could predict the dependent variable very well; this was especially the case with the extinguishing time as a function of the total fire area. The relationship with the lowest ability to predict the dependent variable was the application rate of water as a function of the total fire area. The large number of parameters and their included uncertainties could be an explanation to the increased inability to predict the dependent variable. When comparing the control times of earlier conducted building fire studies with the extinguishing times of developed relationships, it was found that the control times were much longer than the corresponding extinguishing times. The reason behind was most likely due to the difference in the fire area applied in the equations. The resulting relationships for the grass fuel type were found to have lower ability to predict the dependent variable. The reason behind this is unclear and needs to be investigated further.