Proportion of deliberate bushfires in Australia
Saw this and was amazed at the deliberate and suspicious percentages. Mind you, 40% of their bushfires don't have a cause attached. I wonder if the numbers are similar in North America.
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The Australian Institute of Criminology recently completed an extensive analysis of bushfire data collected by Australian fire agencies (Bryant 2008). Approximately 280,000 vegetation fires from 18 Australian fire and land management agencies were included in the analysis, representing around five years of fire data from each agency. The analysis focused on spatial and temporal trends in deliberate vegetation fires - when and where fires occurred, particularly in comparison with non-deliberate fires.
Although the analysis was carried out on an agency and state/territory basis, the availability of national fire data allows some conclusions to be drawn on the proportion of deliberate fires Australia-wide. It was found that the proportion of vegetation fires that were deliberate varies between agencies and regions, as well as across time of day and time of year. However, on average across the country, approximately 13 percent of vegetation fires are recorded as being deliberate and another 37 percent as suspicious. That is, for all vegetation fires for which there is a cause recorded, 50 percent may be lit deliberately (Figure 1).
Figure 1 : Proportion of vegetation fires in Australia by assigned cause
Source: Combined Australian fire agencies [computer data file]
https://aic.gov.au/publications/bfab/bfab051