Development of an integrated analysis system for the effective fire conservancy of forests

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

BACKGROUND

Fire represents a significant threat to forests and wooded areas of the Mediterranean basin. It destroys more trees than any other natural disaster, such as parasite attacks, insects, tornadoes, and frost. The average annual number of forest fires throughout the Mediterranean basin is close to 50 000, twice as many as during the 1970s. In recent years, there have been an increasing number of forest fires in southern European regions. The natural plant ecosystem of these regions, especially in the Mediterranean basin, is rich in shrubs and coniferous forests and thus particularly susceptible to forest fires. Also, climate change has resulted in warmer, drier and longer summer periods that are expected to increase the frequency and severity of forest fires. On average, some 400 000 hectares of forest go up in smoke each year in the region, notably in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The inadequacy of disaster management planning adds to the vulnerability of these areas. Recent forest fire catastrophes have revealed serious gaps in coordination, gaps or overlaps in the chain of command, as well as inadequate resource management and allocation. Often information was not updated or inadequate, leading to inefficient decision making. Being well prepared, however, can reduce risks or impacts. Evaluation of hazards, good preparedness planning, proper management strategies and international co-operation are vital.

OBJECTIVES

The CALCHAS consortium aimed to develop, in accordance with the national and European policies, an intelligent system for an improved and effective preparedness phase in forest fire management. The operational trials of the system will be performed over a pilot period of two years in two case study areas, both Natura 2000 : Mount Grammos in northern Greece and the Troodos mountains in Cyprus.

The main goals of CALCHAS project were to:

Improve knowledge and skills of civil protection professionals/services on effective temporal and spatial planning of resources;

Improve knowledge and skills of decision makers on drawing evacuation plans for the study areas; and/li>

Increase the effectiveness and readiness of the fire brigade, civil protection, local community and other interested stakeholders for a forest fire threat.

RESULTS

The CALCHAS project developed an intelligent system that enables improved and effective preparedness in forest fire management. The main innovation and added value of the IFFAS platform lies in the fact that it is a forest fire evolution model and not a probability one. It is capable of estimating the evolution of an uncontrollable forest fire based on real time (not historical) meteorological data for specific areas.

The core activities that contributed to the development of the IFFAS:

Flora mapping of the pilot application areas, i.e. identification of the flora species and their spatial distribution at the two project sites, through the collection of available data, on site field research and verification visits, data import into GIS software and processing of the flora maps with the Google Earth software;

Flora sampling and lab analyses to determine the flammability of the different species of flora and hence the Forest Fire Risk Index (FFRI);

Identification and mapping of the possible ignition areas using a multi-criteria analysis on the data determined from the flora mapping activity, the FFRI, as well as data collected on the infrastructure, previous fire incidents and geomorphology of the sites;

Identification and mapping of the appropriate locations (10 at each project site) for the installation of the weather stations;

Development of the web-based forest fire evolution simulator, testing of the simulator using off-line scenarios with respect to meteorological conditions, fine-tuning of the simulator on the basis of historical fires;

Design, development and installation of 20 weather stations at the two project sites (10 at Grammos and 10 at Troodos);

Integration of the forest fire evolution simulator with on-line measurements from the meteorological stations transmitted through mobile telephony;

Operation of the IFFAS at the two project sites (since summer 2012 at Troodos and summer 2013 at Grammos), optimisation of its design and operational parameters.

The IFFAS system has a high transferability value, though it must be tailored to incorporate the characteristics specific to each new forest area. The vegetation (species, density and flammability), the topography and spatial parameters of the area, as well as the identified possible areas for a fire to start, need to be determined for each site in which the IFFAS could potentially be applied. These inputs are combined with the actual meteorological data of these areas (transmitted from a network of meteorological stations) in order for the IFFAS simulation model to provide a real-time estimation/prognosis of the evolution of the wild fire.

Regarding transfer and replication of the system to other forest areas, relevant project outputs (design and development methodologies and specifications as well as the data of IFFAS application at the two pilot areas of CALCHAS) are available on the project website (www.calchas.gr) under the tab ‘Results/Deliverables’. The required overall investment cost for the development and application of IFFAS in other forest areas is calculated to be around €350 000 for a 100 km2 forest area and €1 000 000 for a 500 km2 forest area. The area of the project sites are 90 km2 (Troodos) and 345 km2 (Grammos). These costs include study of the area, collection and analysis of data, application of the developed methodologies, design of IFFAS for the specific areas, development of the required hardware (meteorological stations, auxiliary equipment, etc.), installation of the hardware, testing of IFFAS, training of the competent authorities. These costs can vary depending on several parameters: geomorphological and fauna complexity of the area; location and remoteness of the forest area; and availability of existing data for the specific forest area.

The continued operation of IFFAS at the two project sites is expected to lead to a decrease in the impact of destructive forest fires and thus help preserve forest ecosystems and the flora and fauna they host. Other environmental benefits include the minimisation of soil erosion and greenhouse gas emissions, the preservation of carbon sinks, regional microclimates and the avoidance of extreme events such as floods. It will also protect human safety and economic activity linked to forests.