Predictive Model for Fire Outbreaks: Case Study Ashanti Region, Ghana.

The current changes in ecosystem functioning and climate systems are having major impact on Fire Outbreaks conditions globally. It is worrying that not much work appears to have been done in Ghana regarding the formulation of statistical and other models for predicting Fire Outbreaks. Due to this, actuarial and insurance practitioners are unable to effectively help manage the risk of Fire Outbreaks. This study sought to predict monthly fire outbreaks by employing the Box-Jenkins approach to model fire outbreaks using time series data from 1997 to 2014. Several SARIMA (Seasonal Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average) models were tested and the model with lowest Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) was selected. The analysis revealed that ARIMA (4, 1, 1) (1, 1, 1)12 model was the best SARIMA model for the Fire Outbreaks since diagnostic checks revealed its adequate for predicting the monthly number of fire outbreaks in Ashanti Region of Ghana. The sixteen years forecast with this model revealed that the number of fire outbreaks will continue to increase with time. This continuous increase in the pattern of the number of fire outbreaks as evident from the forecast results could be a great danger to the economy of the country. The results achieved for fire forecasting will help to estimate number of fire events which can be used in planning the fire activities in that region. The study recommends that, stakeholders and management of fire should make use of this formulated SARIMA model for the purpose predicting, mitigating and insuring against fire outbreaks in Ghana.

Keywords: Box-Jenkins approach, SARIMA, Fire Outbreak, Ashanti Region and Forecasting