The EFCM algorithm as tool for the creation of hotspots in spatio -temporal GIS

Density cluster methods are used in spatial analysis for the determination of buffer impact areas called hotspots. We use the Extended Fuzzy C-Means (EFCM) algorithm because it has essentially three advantages: robustness to noise and outliers, linear computational complexity and automatic determination of the final number of clusters. The EFCM algorithm inside a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is useful to determine hotspots as circles in the case of bidimensional pattern data. As example, we show these areas around to fire point-events data of the Santa Fè district (NM), downloaded from http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/gis/sfe_gis.shtml, and their spatial-temporal evolution in the period 2000 2006