Fires can occur for many reasons. Some are caused naturally (think lighting striking a tree) and others are man-made (accidental or intentional). The year of 2020 has been unprecedented in the amount of destruction caused by fires across the country, all spurred by heat waves in some place, tropical storms in others, and even debris burning (Source 1; Source 2). It is important to note that not all fires are bad, some ecosystems depend on them and people use it in agriculture. Although not all fires that occur are detrimental, there are really important reasons why we should be actively tracking them. It helps us locate volcanoes, gas flares and the sources of air pollution caused by smoke (Source).

The Coronavirus pandemic has plagued the world in the year 2020, and has been particularly deadly in the United States where, at the time this project was completed, total confirmed cases have just passed 9 Million, while deaths are at about 230,000. We began our exploratory data analysis by graphing cumulative confirmed for each state and comparing them to eachother, we then chose the top three states with the most total confirmed cases and mapped the top 10 counties in each state to observe the severity of infection rates at more granular level.

We then combined the information we had on the spread of the virus with the information we had about fires and heat anomalies to create an interactive map. The heatmap layer shows precise geographical locations of fires and heat anomalies in the United States from February to October 2020, and an additional chloropleth layer illustrates daily confirmed cases in each State for the same range of dates.

Can we create a web-based application that maps fires/heat anomalies as well as COVID-19 infection rates in the US? Is it possible to showcase a relationship between fire occurrences and COVID-19 infection rates?

We hypothesized that people would be more likely to stay at home/indoors in areas with fires, thereby decreasing the likelihood of contracting COVID-19.

• Code
• Presentation
• FIRMS Information Sheet

The heat anomaly data set was provided by LANCE FIRMS operated by NASA ESDIS with funding provided by NASA Headquarters and can be found here

• Covered the dates of 1/1/2020 – 10/23/2020
• 41,709 fire occurrences for the continental US (including the District of Columbia), Alaska and Hawaii

COVID-19 statewide incidence numbers inputted into folium can be found here

COVID-19 data used in EDA graphs can be found here

After looking at our map of COVID-19 data on top of the fire data, we can see that there is a relationship. If we had more time on this project, we would look further into specific counties and look at exact correlations. If we had more time on this project, we would also try to automate the map to ensure the data is current to the date that the person is looking at it. Because of the spike in COVID cases in California on June 28 after the large amount of fires in California on June 14, we believe there is some sort of relationship. Originally, we hypothesized that there would be no relationship because people would be staying inside because of the fires. However, we were wrong. We think this might be because of poorly executed evacuation plans in regards to the wildfires. Our recommendation for the future is that next time there is a pandemic, there should be more strict regulations, especially in counties that are prone to experiencing natural disasters.