It's not fire season, its arson season
Wildland Arson: A Research Assessment
Abstract
–Wildland arson makes up the majority of fire starts in some
parts of the United States and is the second leading cause
of fires on Eastern United States Federal forests–. Individual
arson fires can cause damages to resources and communities totaling over a hundred million dollars. –Recent research
has uncovered the temporal and spatial patterns of arson
fires and their long- and short-term drivers–. In statistical
analyses, explanatory variables include those associated with
general economic conditions and law enforcement. Research
findings indicate that –wildland arson ignitions are consistent
with other kinds of crimes–, in terms of their relationships
to hypothesized factors. –Arson is predictable in short and
long timespans, as its rate is heavily influenced by weather,
climate, fuels, and recent information on other nearby and
recent arson fires–. These results could be used to enhance the
effectiveness of law enforcement and wildfire management
resources.
Subtitles
Wildland Arson Background
Wildland Arson in the Context of Crime
Summary and Conclusions
Law Enforcement Lessons and Programs
Beginning with initial studies by Donoghue and Main
(1985) through studies by the authors reported here, it seems
clear that law enforcement deployment and other efforts
to apprehend and incarcerate arsonists work to reduce
wildland arson in the long run in high-arson locations in
the United States. As found by Prestemon and Butry (2005)
and Butry and Prestemon (2005), wildland arson appears to
be clustered in time and space. Law enforcement personnel
could use these results to advance hotspotting models for
wildland arson or develop tactical responses to reducing
the number of such ignitions in such outbreaks or both.
Although it may not be clear that reducing wildland arson
ignitions results in large-scale and long-run reductions in
the amount of area burned on an annual basis, reducing
such ignitions could have significant benefits for society,
especially in places where arsonists tend to set fires: closer
to built-up areas with greater values at risk (Butry and
others 2002, Genton and others 2006). The results of more
recent research indicate that it might be worthwhile to
redirect law enforcement efforts to certain locations during
periods of weak labor markets and even higher poverty
rates. In this case, however, we caution that careful analysis
is needed that would quantify the tradeoffs of redirection
away from other policing activities. During certain months
of the year and also during droughts, arsonists are more
active, so law enforcement could also pay special attention to weather and fire season variations. As well, from a
strategic standpoint, authorities could also monitor trends
in climate variables or their predictions (Ji and others 1998)
as indicators of broad trends in climatic factors that create
conditions favorable for fire setting. Special attention to
weather and climate is important, as conditions favorable
to ignitions may also favor large and intense fires once they
are successfully ignited.
Wildland Manager Lessons
–Wildland managers can use the same lessons as indicated
for law enforcement.–
moar @
Wildland Arson: A Research Assessment
https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/gtr802/Vol2/pnw_gtr802_prestemon02.pdf
PDF of paper attached
h/t to op https://voat.co/v/QRV/4022834