An efficient, multi-scale neighbourhood index to quantify wildfire likelihood

This study aimed to develop an approach for quantifying wildfire likelihood that is both computationally efficient and able to consider contagious and directionally specific fire behaviour properties across multiple spatial ‘neighbourhood’ scales. To effectively reduce future wildfire risk, several management strategies must be evaluated under plausible future scenarios, requiring models that provide estimates of how likely wildfires are to spread to community assets (wildfire likelihood) in a computationally efficient manner. Approaches to quantifying wildfire likelihood using fire simulation models cannot practically achieve this because they are too computationally expensive.