INTELLIGENT MANAGEMENT OCCURRENCE AND SPREAD OF FRONT FIRE IN GIS BY USING CELLULAR AUTOMATA. CASE STUDY: GOLESTAN FOREST

Abstract. Jungles are a country’s treasures, and the survival of humans and the earth depends on the oxygen that they produce (trees). Three million hectares of jungle are destroyed each year as a result of natural or human-caused wildfires. The massive wildfires occurring in the world confirms that this destructive phenomenon leaves irreconcilable effects on regional ecosystems, vegetation and wildlife; presenting more effective approaches for preventing and managing this complex phenomenon has therefore always been the focus of environmental managers and planners. In other words, it is necessary to model the spread of wildfires, which can be used for utilizing forces and equipment most effectively. Cellular automaton is considered a very simple yet highly effective method that is very capable of modeling dynamic events, like urban development, spread of wildfires, disease outbreaks and others. This study used layers such as height, slope, aspect, vegetation density, roads, rivers and climate as its basis. This was a case study of the Golestan region’s jungles, which calculated the general accuracy of the wildfire spread model to be 65 percent, and the Cohen’s kappa coefficient to be 59 percent.