Crystal ball gazing 101
Rating the best methods for predicting the future
Before we ask ourselves what the future holds for something as complicated as wildfire, let’s take a step back and consider how we predict anything.
As it turns out, there aren’t actually that many options for predicting the future.
Option #1 You know the future already
If you have the power of divination this is definitely a good option. Please leave next week’s Lotto numbers in the comments section.
Option #2 Make something up
This isn’t so bad. You might get it right! Even if you don’t, people might not notice, or remember, or have the power to do anything about it (remind you of any government forecasts?). For added robustness make your predictions vague and open to interpretation (here’s looking at you, Nostradamus).
Option #3 Tomorrow = today (a.k.a. inertia, status quo)
Now we’re cooking. Assuming that the future will look like the present can be surprisingly solid. It can get complicated quickly though. What if you’re not even sure what today looks like? What if things keep changing, and so to be safe you also look at yesterday, and the day before, and… how far back do you go? Option #3 would have been a super embarrassing guide the day before the big bang.
Option #4 Model it
Ding ding ding! Whether your model is simple, complex or inscrutable (hey, don’t knock machine learning), you are at least taking prediction seriously now. Bonus points for a) making your predictions specific, falsifiable and publicly available, and b) being open to revising your model.
Option #5 Control it
This can drastically reduce prediction error but the record of successful attempts to control the future is patchy. Those who do seek to partially or fully control something generally need some kind of model to guide their interventions anyway, which sends us back to Option 4 above.
What’s this all got to do with fire then, eh?
I spend most of my time developing, running, evaluating and communicating models of some aspect or another of wildfire, from important drivers like weather and fuel moisture, to collective patterns of fire in space and time, to fire’s many impacts on people, property, the environment, the hip pocket and all the other things we care about, to the effectiveness of interventions like prescribed burning. Sometimes I use these models to predict the future!
3,422
The number of results in a journal database search using the keywords “climate change” and “wildfire”. Using “bushfire” instead narrows it down to 327. In case you were wondering why I frequently use the former despite my austral upbringing. Is this the scientific equivalent of an Aussie singing in a North American accent? Incidentally, the alphabet crew gives us 7.2m hits for search term #1 and 737,000 for search term #2. There’s academia reproducing social inequalities again.
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Stephen Pyne @stephenjpyne. Renowned historian, writer, self-described pyromantic and coiner of the term pyrocene. Twitter works best when it sends you away from twitter to something more substantial and enlightening and Steve regularly does this.