Forest fire susceptibility mapping using multi-criteria decision making and machine learning models in the Western Ghats of India.

Forest fires have significantly increased over the last decade due to shifts in rainfall patterns, warmer summers, and long spells of dry weather events in the coastal regions. Assessment of susceptibility to forest fires has become an important management tool for damage control before the occurrence of fires, which often spread very rapidly. In this context, the current study was undertaken with the aim to map forest areas susceptible to fire in the state of Goa (India) using remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system () derived variables through an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and machine learning techniques namely random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), extreme gradient boosting (XGB).

Competence of ethics committees in patient protection in clinical research.

Research Ethics Committees (RECs) are responsible for the protection of patients' rights and wellbeing. In this paper, we describe the findings of a survey of ethics committee members in a south Indian state. 29 members of 11 RECs responded to a questionnaire of 56 questions on their knowledge of and attitudes towards ethics review and the practices of the RECs to which they belonged.