Integrating Wildfire Protection: Exploratory Data Analysis

Dynamic summary

We examined the summary of ages, the rate of seeking wildfire-related information, the preferred method to receive updating messages, and the perception of wildfire as a natural hazard of our survey data file. Knowing the age range of our data set helped us determine if our data set represented the general population. The respondents of the survey were, on average, 42 years old. The maximum age was 84 years old, and the minimum age was 16 years old. These participants rated their own general well-being on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being the best health. Of those with excellent health, 68.9% reported that they actively seek information about wildfire and smoke information. Of those with poor health, 71.4% reported seeking out information for that same question. Understanding these percentages is helpful when determining if a solution must focus attention on certain health groups. We assessed how participants preferred to receive updates on wildfire hazards to find desirable solutions. Receiving updates through emergency alert was the most popular, with 338 votes. We determined that 78.2% of participants considered wildfires to be a natural hazard, which helped us to understand if wildfire hazards are a widespread worry.

Table

Table 1. PMI Levels By Room.

room mean_typ mean_ff
fMoffice 348.5600046 358.45811
fhotdesk1 299.7223342 349.68079
ww232 225.6211623 260.70859
ww373a 153.5721979 177.70210
ww373c 131.6884551 105.75537
ww353 114.0899654 154.82017
ww390a 98.7547540 126.72223
ww250a 97.7753958 129.53594
ww390d 97.7357794 133.67305
ww348 86.0041217 130.53496
foutside 14.2103553 114.49232
woutside 8.3665716 91.01798
wC373c 2.8158724 59.69251
finside 1.4354881 28.56967
fPoffice 1.0902948 42.30925
fcorridor2 0.7283520 36.48904
fcubicle3 0.5605991 36.07072
fpantry 0.5088505 35.50992
fcubiclecorner 0.3717692 26.94649
ffloor2mid 0.3379727 33.00561
fcorridor1 0.3025493 29.64299
fcubiclehotdesk 0.2617694 28.70374
fhotdesk2 0.2102704 29.88553
ffloor2wall 0.1910193 28.00370
femptyfloor 0.1528417 28.27563

This table is ordered in descending order of the mean PMI in a typical setting, with no forest fires. Rows starting with “w” refer to rooms in the “Wurster” building, and rows starting with “f” refers to rooms in the “Fourth St.” building. Rooms in the Wurster building have similar PMI’s compared to rooms in the Fourth street building. The fourth street building’s office had the highest average PMI for both typical and forest fire conditions. The fourth street building’s empty floor had the lowest average PMI for typical conditions

Charts

Chart 1: Actions to Protect

Figure 1. Actions that individuals take to protect against wildfire smoke.

This data comes from a survey in which participants ranked their own general health, then answered questions regarding their attitudes towards wildfires. This chart is important because it reveals how the general population in the greater Boise area react to protect themselves about wildfire smoke. The majority of respondents ranked themselves as either in good health or excellent health. This chart also demonstrates that staying at home was the most common course of action for those in excellent and good health. However, those in poor and fair health reported that taking medications was the most common action. Additionally, those in good health’s third most popular action was to use a personal air filter. Moving to a building with an air filter was the third, and fifth choice for those in fair and good health, respectively.

Chart 2: rooms’ resistance to wildfire smoke

Figure 2. Rooms’ measured air quality in wildfire smoke.

Figure 3. Rooms’ measured air quality in wildfire smoke, continued.

This data is collected by measuring the value of pm2.5 inside several rooms in NV and MV and outside during an increase in wildfire smoke. This chart compares different rooms’ resistance when facing pollutants in the air between the two areas each days in November 2018, which reveals rooms in MV are more resistant to smoke since the pm2.5 value inside each rooms are much lower than the value outside. Particularly hotdesk1 and hotdesk2 are the most resistant room. In NV, the most stable and resistant room type is C373c. The chart provides scientific evidence of the room types that should be encouraged to build in specific region.

Chart 3

Figure 4. Room occupancy during wildfires.

This pie chart is used to answer our third research question regarding which rooms people feel the safest to go into during forest fire as air quality decreases. The data came from our data set that examined people’s choice of indoor rooms during certain periods of time. The chart shows the occupancy rate of each room when wildfires occurs, and the pie chart was chosen to show proportion. We noticed that a few rooms have the exact same occupancy rate, and some rooms are significantly more frequently occupied than others. Viewers can clearly distinguish people’s gravitation towards each room in this chart as rooms are labeled.