Fire in Cape Town informal settlements mapped from remote sensing

Abstract

This data was created from a remote sensing method using Sentinel 2 data originally described in: Gibson, L., Engelbrecht, J. & Rush, D. Detecting historic informal settlement fires with Sentinel 1 and 2 satellite data - Two case studies in Cape Town. Fire Safety Journal (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2019.102828. Compilation of this dataset is described in Gibson et al (in preparation). Towards understanding the influence of wind and the spatial layout of dwellings on fire spread in informal settlements in Cape Town. The geographic data is in shapefile format (map projection WGS84, TM 19) with the following fields: Shape_length: perimeter (m) of polygon Shape_Area: area (m2) of polygon Burn_ID: Unique ID given to each individual fire. Closest_da: The closest date at which the fire is confirmed to have occurred. Read together with Field "Comment". Incident_n: Where possible, the fire was matched against fires recorded in the City of Cape Town fire incident database, found here: https://web1.capetown.gov.za/web1/OpenDataPortal/DatasetDetail?DatasetName=Fire%20incidence Comment: Source of validation, either the City of Cape Town fire incidence database, media reports where by the location and size of the fire, a link could be established, Historic Google Earth imagery where by scrolling through historic imagery, the presence of a fire could be detected.