Speaker
Description
The number of wildfires in Mediterranean countries is quite high but they are mainly concentrated around summer months. Due to seasonality, there are territories where the number of fires is zero in some months and is overdispersed in others. Zero-inflated negative binomial mixed models are adapted to this type of data because they allow to describe the patterns that explain both number of fires and its non-occurrence, as well as provide good prediction tools. In addition to model-based predictions, a parametric bootstrap method is applied for estimating mean squared errors and constructing prediction intervals. The statistical methodology and developed software are applied to model and predict number of wildfires in Spain between 2002 and 2015 by provinces and months.