Scan statistics analysis of forest fire clusters

Spatio-temporal clusters in 1997-2003 fire sequences of Tuscany region (central Italy) have been identified and analysed by using the scan statistic, a method which was devised to evidence clusters in epidemiology. Results showed that the method is reliable to find clusters of events and to evaluate their significance via Monte Carlo replication. The evaluation of the presence of spatial and temporal patterns in fire occurrence and their significance could have a great impact in forthcoming studies on fire occurrences prediction. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.