Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Spatial Analysis Of Forest Fire Survival And A Marked Cluster Process For Simulating Fire Load, Amy A. Morin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The duration of a forest fire depends on many factors, such as weather, fuel type and fuel moisture, as well as fire management strategies. Understanding how these impact the duration of a fire can lead to more effective suppression efforts as this information can be incorporated into decision support systems used by fire management agencies to help allocate suppression resources. This thesis presents a thorough survival analysis of lightning and people-caused fires in the Intensive fire management zone of Ontario, Canada from 1989 through 2004. The analysis is then extended to investigate spatial patterns across this region using proportional hazards …

Statistical Applications In Wildfire Management And Prediction, Lengyi Han

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis develops statistical methods and models and applies them
to problems related to forest fires. The unifying goal of the work is to provide a data analytic basis for quantifying the uncertainty surrounding fire ignition and fire growth which builds on existing theory where possible.

The main body of the thesis is comprised of three research papers. The Fire Weather Index (FWI) plays an important role in fire management and is central to the first two papers. In the first instance, the block bootstrap confidence interval method is used to deal nonparametrically with the dependence in the FWI data. …

Decision Theory Based Models In Insurance And Beyond, Raymond Ye Zhang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Everyday, we make difficult choices under uncertainties. The decision making process becomes even more complicated when more agents get involved: one must consider their interactions and conflicts of interest because the final outcome is based not only on an agent's decision but on everybody's.

In insurance industry, companies try to avoid making large claim payments to policyholders (commonly known as insureds) by purchasing reinsurance policies from reinsurance companies (the reinsurer). Each policy details conditions upon which the reinsurer pays a share of the claim to the insurance company (also known as the cedent or the insurer). To reach an agreement, …