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 and roads are located. It will be used to calculate the distance to the built-up areas.

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 Risk 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.