BCWildfire: A Long-term Multi-factor Dataset and Deep Learning Benchmark for Boreal Wildfire Risk Prediction

Abstract

Wildfire risk prediction remains a critical yet challenging task due to the complex interactions among fuel conditions, meteorology, topography, and human activity. Despite growing interest in data-driven approaches, publicly available benchmark datasets that support long-term temporal modeling, large-scale spatial coverage, and multimodal drivers remain scarce. To address this gap, we present a 25-year, daily-resolution wildfire dataset covering 240 million hectares across British Columbia and surrounding regions. The dataset includes 38 covariates, encompassing active fire detections, weather variables, fuel conditions, terrain features, and anthropogenic factors. Using this benchmark, we evaluate a diverse set of time-series forecasting models, including CNN-based, linear-based, Transformer-based, and Mamba-based architectures. We also investigate effectiveness of position embedding and the relative importance of different fire-driving factors.