A Study on the Susceptibility of Wildfire Disasters in Wuzhou City Based on Interpretability Model

Frequent wildfires in Wuzhou City, Guangxi, pose serious threats to the ecological environment and the safety of people’s lives and property. Accurately assessing wildfire susceptibility is crucial for effective disaster prevention and management decisions. This study aims to create an accurate wildfire susceptibility model for Wuzhou City and examine the influence of various features on the prediction results through an explanatory approach. Based on historical wildfire data from 2017 to 2023, the study comprehensively considered the spatial distribution characteristics of the samples, selecting 15 evaluation factors such as elevation, NDVI, average annual precipitation, and average temperature. The Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) algorithm was adopted to construct the prediction model, aiming to provide precise wildfire susceptibility assessment. The SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) method was then used to explain the global and local models, analyzing the importance and dependence of each feature. XGBoost is widely used in wildfire prediction due to its efficiency and accuracy. It not only provides strong predictive performance but also helps identify key factors influencing wildfire occurrences. The SHAP method further enhances the XGBoost model by improving the interpretability of the results. It quantifies each feature’s contribution to the predictions, enabling decision-makers to better understand the model’s decision-making process. The model’s performance was further validated using typical wildfire data from 2024. The results indicate that: (1) the wildfire susceptibility model for Wuzhou City exhibits excellent performance, with an Area Under the Curve (AUC) value of 0.981, accurately identifying high-susceptibility areas and providing essential decision-making support for relevant departments; (2) nine key factors affecting wildfire susceptibility in Wuzhou City were identified, including average annual precipitation, average temperature, and average wind speed, offering scientific evidence for wildfire risk management; (3) a comparison between typical historical wildfire samples from 2017 to 2023 and the latest wildfire data from January 1 to November 10, 2024, further validated the model’s accuracy. The findings of this study hold significant theoretical and practical value for wildfire prevention and control in Wuzhou City.