• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.13-19
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• 2010

In this study, surveys of forest fire division of eight local government about a education program for forest fire prevention and attacking of Forest Human Resources Development Institutes were conducted. In the result, questionnaire answers about improvements of curriculum, requested subject, training camp for forest fire attacking and others were analyzed. So, we made an alternative proposal of education program about forest fire for actively meeting a change of forest condition and forest fire management policy, strengthening of ability that officers in forest fire division required, and enhancing a efficiency.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.145-153
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• 2010

Korea was experienced more forest fire occurrence compared to an area. As a forest fire occurrence from man caused burning for a farming increased and was one of the main reasons of forest fire occurrence in Korea, agriculturist-was a main reason of forest fire occurrence-opinion analysis was needed for forest fire prevention from this reason. Therefore, we asked agriculturist who live in province frequently experienced a forest fire from the burning for farming to answer questions. In result, a half of the respondents have a burning experience for farming and the main reason of the burning was the clearance around farmlands. In result of survey about recognition rate of forest fire prevention policy (forest fire season, incineration inhibition within 100 m from forest, license system for burning, joint burning system by a rural community, imposing a fine for burning) was almost high except license system for the burning, In the result about analysis according to ages and provinces, the recognition rate was high in province experienced severe forest fire damage and low in below 40 years group. So, the direction of forest fire prevention policy would need to be mediated in the view of agriculturist who need to use a fire because of farming labor shortage and higher age. And a consolidated education of forest fire prevention would be needed to agriculturist who live in province experienced rarely forest fire and in below 40 years group.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.149-157
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• 2016

Understanding regional characteristics in forest fire occurrence is important to establish effective forest fire prevention policy in Korea. This study analyzed the characteristics of forest fires occurred in 16 administrative districts for recent 25 years (1990~2014) to examine regional characteristics in forest fire occurrence. Forest fire occurrence reflects regional characteristics depending on climatic factors as well as region's society-cultural factors. Results showed that the first cause of forest fire occurrence was carelessness by human activities throughout all administrative districts, however, the second cause depends on regional characteristics. As the results of forest fire occurrence period analyzed for 10 days, the most forest fires occurred in the southern region during January to March, while forest fires in the northern region occurred mostly during March to April. We classified forest fire occurrence patterns into three types (centralized: Gyeonggi-do, dispersal: Busan, horizontally distributed: Gyeongsangnam-do) by multi-temporal analysis for forest fire occurrence period.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.99 no.2
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• pp.163-171
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• 2010

Forest fires have potentials to change the structure and function of forest ecosystems and significantly influence on atmosphere and biogeochemical cycles. Forest fire also affects the quality of public benefits such as carbon sequestration, soil fertility, grazing value, biodiversity, or tourism. The prediction of fire occurrence and its spread is critical to the forest managers for allocating resources and developing the forest fire danger rating system. Most of fires were human-caused fires in Korea, but meteorological factors are also big contributors to fire behaviors and its spread. Thus, meteorological factors as well as social factors were considered in the fire danger rating systems. A total of 298 forest fires occurred during the fall season from 2002 to 2006 in South Korea were considered for developing a logistic model of forest fire occurrence. The results of statistical analysis show that only effective humidity and temperature significantly affected the logistic models (p<0.05). The results of ROC curve analysis showed that the probability of randomly selected fires ranges from 0.739 to 0.876, which represent a relatively high accuracy of the developed model. These findings would be necessary for the policy makers in South Korea for the prevention of forest fires.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.39-46
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• 2011

In order to consider the prevention countermeasure to the occurrence of forest fires, analysing characteristic of the past forest fire data is needed. This research analyzed distribution and characteristics of forest fires damage over 30 ha based on statistics data of forest fires in Korea between 1975 and 2010. As a result, the number of forest fires damage over 30 ha as 23 was most occurred in 1978. Forest fires show an upward tendency from 1970 to 2000. Forest fires of 30 ha~50 ha damaged area was most occurred. Forest fire in Gangwon province was occurred as the number of total 66 (37.0 %). Gangwon province was superior in point density analysis. The number of forest fire occurrence over 30 ha was most high to 114 (63.0 %) in April and to 44 (24.3 %) in Sunday. The occurrence number of forest fire and damage caused by forest fire is increasing more and more since 1975, appropriate authorities can use effectively in devising policy for forest fire prevention from this result.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.108 no.1
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• pp.88-96
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to understand when forest fire as a natural phenomenon becomes constructed as social issues in Korea; how the forest fire-related discourses in the editorials reflecting the social perceptions have been changed regarding the principal subject and the measures of the forest fire management; and whether the social perception on the forest fire affects the forest fire policy of the state. From the analysis of a total of 44 editorials related to forest fires from 1988 to 2017. By the using, in the forest fire-related editorials the social perceptions on forest fires are forest fire editorials categories, main keywords, contents of social perception on 'the main subject responsible for forest fire management,' 'forest fire prevention measures,' categorization, frequency analysis and context analysis of words used. It is found that in the first-period forest fire management measures were recognized as a part of the overall forest management. In the second period, the approaches of ecological management emerged on the part of forest fire management. As forest fires were managed as a type of social disaster during the third period, such perceptions were gradually reinforced that the state should protect the people from the forest fire. In the 3rd, 4th, and 5th National Forest Plan, the forest fire management policy of each period was focused in enlightening the general public, protecting forest resources ecosystems, and preventing loss of lives, respectively. As a result of the analysis of social perceptions and comparing them to the forest fire policies through the analysis of editorials on forest fires, it is found that the social perception on the forest fire and forest fire management plan has changed having interconnections.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.189-204
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• 2018

This study has developed a forest fire occurrence probability model for inaccessible areas such as North Korea and Demilitarized Zone and we have developed a real-time forest fire danger rating system that can be used in fire-related works. There are limitations on the research that it is impossible to conduct site investigation for data acquisition and verification for forest fire weather index model and system development. To solve this problem, we estimated the fire spots in the areas where access is impossible by using MODIS satellite data with scientific basis. Using the past meteorological reanalysis data(5㎞ resolution) produced by the Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA) on the extracted fires, the meteorological characteristics of the fires were extracted and made database. The meteorological factors extracted from the forest fire ignition points in the inaccessible areas are statistically correlated with the forest fire occurrence and the weather factors and the logistic regression model that can estimate the forest fires occurrence(fires 1 and non-fores 0). And used to calculate the forest fire weather index(FWI). The results of the statistical analysis show that the logistic models(p<0.01) strongly depends on maximum temperature, minimum relative humidity, effective humidity and average wind speed. The logistic regression model constructed in this study showed a relatively high accuracy of 66%. These findings may be beneficial to the policy makers in Republic of Korea(ROK) and Democratic People's Republic of Korea(DPRK) for the prevention of forest fires.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.199-207
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• 2016

This study was conducted to develop a forest fire occurrence model using meteorological characteristics for practical forecasting of forest fire danger rate by reflecting the climate change for the time period of 2000yrs. Forest fire in South Korea is highly influenced by humidity, wind speed, temperature, and precipitation. To effectively forecast forest fire occurrence, we developed a forest fire danger rating model using weather factors associated with forest fire in 2000yrs. Forest fire occurrence patterns were investigated statistically to develop a forest fire danger rating index using times series weather data sets collected from 76 meteorological observation centers. The data sets were used for 11 years from 2000 to 2010. Development of the national forest fire occurrence probability model used a logistic regression analysis with forest fire occurrence data and meteorological variables. Nine probability models for individual nine provinces including Jeju Island have been developed. The results of the statistical analysis show that the logistic models (p<0.05) strongly depends on the effective and relative humidity, temperature, wind speed, and rainfall. The results of verification showed that the probability of randomly selected fires ranges from 0.687 to 0.981, which represent a relatively high accuracy of the developed model. These findings may be beneficial to the policy makers in South Korea for the prevention of forest fires.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.348-356
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• 2018

Most of fires were human-caused fires in Korea, but meteorological factors are also big contributors to fire behavior and its spread. Thus, meteorological factors as well as topographical and forest factors were considered in the fire danger rating systems. This study aims to develop an advanced national integrated daily weather index(DWI) using weather data in the spring and fall to support forest fire prevention strategy in South Korea. DWI represents the meteorological characteristics, such as humidity (relative and effective), temperature and wind speed, and we integrated nine logistic regression models of the past into one national model. One national integrated model of the spring and fall is respectively $[1+{\exp}\{-(2.706+(0.088^*T_{mean})-(0.055^*Rh)-(0.023^*Eh)-(0.014^*W_{mean}))\}^{-1}]^{-1}$, $[1+{\exp}\{-(1.099+(0.117^*T_{mean})-(0.069^*Rh)-(0.182^*W_{mean}))\}^{-1}]^{-1}$ and all weather variables significantly (p<0.01) affected the probability of forest fire occurrence in the overall regions. The accuracy of the model in the spring and fall is respectively 71.7% and 86.9%. One integrated national model showed 10% higher accuracy than nine logistic regression models when it is applied weather data with 66 random sampling in forest fire event days. These findings would be necessary for the policy makers in the Republic of Korea for the prevention of forest fires.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.1121-1130
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• 2014

This study aims to find the perception and utilization of the citizen about the dryness watch warning (DWW) among special weather reports. For this we have made up a descriptive questionnaire including the perception, utilization of special weather reports. Using the SPSS 17.0 program, descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA and Scheffe test were used to analyze the collected data. The results are as follows; The perception of DWW is measured by 4 point Likert scale and the average is $15.97{\pm}3.70$ (percentile=57.0). This value shows that the awareness level is not that high and according to the occupation, college students show the lowest awareness and housewives show the highest awareness. According to the age, the teens and twenties show the lowest awareness and fifties and sixties show the highest awareness. Although the perception of the teens and college students are rather poor, there were many positive answers that it is necessary to establish the advanced disaster prevention plan according to the questionnaire about the utilization of DWW. Therefore, if we come up with an effective plan to improve the perception than we can expect a large-effect in terms of fire and forest fire prevention. The perception of DWW can be improved by providing weather information and weather related education program on TV or internet which have the high level of preference. Also, it is necessary to provide online and offline program of advertising education and disaster management education through the weather forecast bureau which is the host organization of delivering weather information.