2. Data and Preparation

When starting a GIS analysis, you will always need to collect data first. Depending on the type of analysis, you’ll use different types of data. For our Fire Susceptibility map, we need a few different things:

  • Satellite imagery. This is used for the NDMI analysis.
  • Digital Elevation Model (DEM). This shows the elevation of the Earth’s surface and is used to calculate the slopes.
  • Land cover. This shows the different types of land cover that we will encounter in the study area.
  • Buildings and Roads. This uses vector data to show where buildings, roads, and rivers are located. It will be used to calculate the distance to the built-up areas and rivers.

We will use this data to perform different types of analyses. At the end we can combine all the results and create the final Fire Susceptibility map using a weighted overlay analysis.

In this chapter, you will learn how to set up a project in QGIS and how you to prepare data so that it can be used in further analyses.