BC Wildfire PSTA Fire Density

Provincial Strategic Threat Analysis (PSTA) is designed to consistently assess and map potential wildfire threats to values across the landscape (including communities, infrastructure and natural resources) and to integrate different aspects of wildfire hazard and risk.

The fire density layer was analyzed using fires with final sizes greater than 4.0 hectares from 1950 onwards. It was updated in 2021. These were given a weight of one (1) in the analysis, while large fires (> 500 ha) were given a weight of 5, in order to reflect the much greater cost and damage usually associated with larger fires. A kernel density analysis was conducted to represent the historic fire data as a seamless surface representing fire occurrence across the province; a 10 km search radius was chosen, and the pixel size was 50 m. The ArcGIS kernel density function (v. 10.3; ESRI, Redlands, California, USA) fits a smooth surface to a spatial point frequency dataset, representing actual fire origin points as random samples from a smooth probability surface. The analysis search radius was 10 kilometers and this distance was reflected in the mapped output classes; thus, the fire density at any point on the landscape is a modeled probability value reflecting the number of historic fires found within a radius of 10 kilometers, or within a 314 km2 circle around the point of interest. Note that this is different from a simple point density, and the values in the fire density layer classes do not represent the exact numbers of historic fires within the search radius; closer and more clustered fires are weighted higher within that circle, and this can result in significantly higher values than may be expected compared with a simple point search.The output values therefore represent a modeled probability approximately representing the number of nearby fires (4 ha and greater, treating 500+ ha fires as 5 individual events) since 1950. Using this as an input to the Wildfire Threat Analysis layer is based on the premise that areas that were prone to multiple larger fires in the past are likely prone to larger fires in the present and near future. Final class limits are based on the weighting scheme described above: fires from 0 to 4 hectares (not counted, weight of 0); fires from 4.001 to 500 hectares (weight of 1); fires 500.001 hectares or larger (weight of 5). Units are approximate weighted fire frequency within a 10 km radius, 1950 onwards. Water bodies were overlaid on the raster and assigned their own class, -1.

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• Fire Density
• PSTA
• Wildfire

Additional Info

• Maturity Level 1 (46%)
• Maturity Level 2 (38%)
• Maturity Level 3 (0%)
• Maturity Level 4 (0%)
• Maturity Level 5 (0%)
• Maturity Level 6 (0%)

Field	Value
Last Updated	October 19, 2025, 23:25 (UTC)
Created	October 19, 2025, 23:25 (UTC)
Domain / Topic Domain or topic of the dataset being cataloged.
Title Title for the Dataset.	BC Wildfire PSTA Fire Density
Description A description of the dataset.	Provincial Strategic Threat Analysis (PSTA) is designed to consistently assess and map potential wildfire threats to values across the landscape (including communities, infrastructure and natural resources) and to integrate different aspects of wildfire hazard and risk. The fire density layer was analyzed using fires with final sizes greater than 4.0 hectares from 1950 onwards. It was updated in 2021. These were given a weight of one (1) in the analysis, while large fires (> 500 ha) were given a weight of 5, in order to reflect the much greater cost and damage usually associated with larger fires. A kernel density analysis was conducted to represent the historic fire data as a seamless surface representing fire occurrence across the province; a 10 km search radius was chosen, and the pixel size was 50 m. The ArcGIS kernel density function (v. 10.3; ESRI, Redlands, California, USA) fits a smooth surface to a spatial point frequency dataset, representing actual fire origin points as random samples from a smooth probability surface. The analysis search radius was 10 kilometers and this distance was reflected in the mapped output classes; thus, the fire density at any point on the landscape is a modeled probability value reflecting the number of historic fires found within a radius of 10 kilometers, or within a 314 km2 circle around the point of interest. Note that this is different from a simple point density, and the values in the fire density layer classes do not represent the exact numbers of historic fires within the search radius; closer and more clustered fires are weighted higher within that circle, and this can result in significantly higher values than may be expected compared with a simple point search.The output values therefore represent a modeled probability approximately representing the number of nearby fires (4 ha and greater, treating 500+ ha fires as 5 individual events) since 1950. Using this as an input to the Wildfire Threat Analysis layer is based on the premise that areas that were prone to multiple larger fires in the past are likely prone to larger fires in the present and near future. Final class limits are based on the weighting scheme described above: fires from 0 to 4 hectares (not counted, weight of 0); fires from 4.001 to 500 hectares (weight of 1); fires 500.001 hectares or larger (weight of 5). Units are approximate weighted fire frequency within a 10 km radius, 1950 onwards. Water bodies were overlaid on the raster and assigned their own class, -1.
Tags / Keywords Keywords/tags categorizing the dataset.	Fire Density PSTA Wildfire
Format (CSV, XLS, TXT, PDF, etc) File format of the dataset.
Dataset Size Dataset size in megabytes.
Metadata Identifier Metadata identifier – can be used as the unique identifier for catalogue entry
Published Date Published date of the dataset.	2020-02-05
Time Period Data Span (start date) Start date of the data in the dataset.
Time Period Data Span (end date) End date of time data in the dataset.
GeoSpatial Area Data Span A spatial region or named place the dataset covers.

Field	Value
Access category Type of access granted for the dataset (open, closed, service, etc).
License License used to access the dataset.	Access Only
Limits on use Limits on use of data.
Location Location of the dataset.	https://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/bc-wildfire-psta-fire-density
Data Service Data service for accessing a dataset.
Owner Owner of the dataset.	BC Wildfire Service
Contact Point Who to contact regarding access?	Devona Hay
Contact Point Email The email to contact regarding access?	[email protected]
Publisher Publisher of the dataset.
Publisher Email Email of the publisher.
Author Author of the dataset.
Author Email Email of the author.
Accessed At Date the data and metadata was accessed.

Field	Value
Identifier Unique identifier for the dataset.
Language Language(s) of the dataset
Link to dataset description A URL to an external document describing the dataset.
Persistent Identifier Data is identified by a persistent identifier.
Globally Unique Identifier Data is identified by a persistent and globally unique identifier.
Contains data about individuals Does the data hold data about individuals?
Contains data about identifiable individuals Does the data hold identifiable data about individual?
Contains Indigenous Data Does the data hold data about Indigenous communities?
Portal Type Platform type of the source portal.

Field	Value
Version Version of the datatset	None
Source Source of the dataset.
Version notes Version notes about the dataset.
Is version of another dataset Link to dataset that it is a version of.
Other versions Link to datasets that are versions of it.
Provenance Text Provenance Text of the data.
Provenance URL Provenance URL of the data.
Temporal resolution Describes how granular the date/time data in the dataset is.
GeoSpatial resolution in meters Describes how granular (in meters) geospatial data is in the dataset.
GeoSpatial resolution (in regions) Describes how granular (in regions) geospatial data is in the dataset.

Field	Value
Indigenous Community Permission Who holds the Indigenous Community Permission. Who to contact regarding access to a dataset that has data about Indigenous communities.
Community Permission Community permission (who gave permission).
The Indigenous communities the dataset is about Indigenous communities from which data is derived.

Field	Value
Number of data rows If tabular dataset, total number of rows.
Number of data columns If tabular dataset, total number of unique columns.
Number of data cells If tabular dataset, total number of cells with data.
Number of data relations If RDF dataset, total number of triples.
Number of entities If RDF dataset, total number of entities.
Number of data properties If RDF dataset, total number of unique properties used by the triples.
Data quality Describes the quality of the data in the dataset.
Metric for data quality A metric used to measure the quality of the data, such as missing values or invalid formats.

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