- Author
-
Tait, A.
|
Zheng, X.
- Title
- Optimal Mapping and Interpretation of Fire Weather Information.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd., Auckland, New Zealand
- Report
-
New Zealand Fire Service Commission Research Report Number 49; NIWA Client Report: WLG2005-1
June 2005
67 p.
- Keywords
-
weather effects
|
mapping
|
data analysis
|
rainfall
|
methodology
|
humidity
|
wind velocity
|
temperature
- Identifiers
- Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW); Thin Plate Laplacian Smoothing Spline (LSS); Fire RAWS Network Analysis
- Abstract
- Accurate weather information is vital for fire risk management in New Zealand. The current NZ fire weather station network comprises over 140 fire Remote Automatic Weather Stations (RAWS), supplemented with observations from an additional 30 or so MetService stations during the fire season. However, the quality of the weather data being used to gauge fire danger has not been adequately assessed and the current network of climate stations may not sufficiently cover all areas that are susceptible to fire. There are also several methods presently being used to interpolate weather and fire risk variables to locations where there are no measurements. It is important to identify an optimal mapping approach so that fire risk management can be made more efficient and effective. This research report assesses each of these factors and makes recommendations in the following areas: 1. Upgrading or replacement of stations in the current fire RAWS network which have poor data records. 2. Redundancy of existing stations, the current number of stations, and potential sites for future stations. 3. The current practice of using data substitutes to infill missing data. 4. The optimum choice of interpolation parameters and order of interpolation.