Development of a framework for fire risk assessment using remote sensing and geographic information system technologies

Emilio Chuvieco, Inmaculada Aguado, Marta Yebra, Héctor Nieto, Javier Salas, M. Pilar Martín, Lara Vilar, Javier Martínez, Susana Martín, Paloma Ibarra, Juan de la Riva, Jaime Baeza, Francisco Rodríguez, Juan R. Molina, Miguel A. Herrera and Ricardo Zamora

Ecological Modelling, 2010, vol. 221, issue 1, 46-58

Abstract: Forest fires play a critical role in landscape transformation, vegetation succession, soil degradation and air quality. Improvements in fire risk estimation are vital to reduce the negative impacts of fire, either by lessen burn severity or intensity through fuel management, or by aiding the natural vegetation recovery using post-fire treatments. This paper presents the methods to generate the input variables and the risk integration developed within the Firemap project (funded under the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology) to map wildland fire risk for several regions of Spain. After defining the conceptual scheme for fire risk assessment, the paper describes the methods used to generate the risk parameters, and presents proposals for their integration into synthetic risk indices. The generation of the input variables was based on an extensive use of geographic information system and remote sensing technologies, since the project was intended to provide a spatial and temporal assessment of risk conditions. All variables were mapped at 1km2 spatial resolution, and were integrated into a web-mapping service system. This service was active in the summer of 2007 for semi-operational testing of end-users. The paper also presents the first validation results of the danger index, by comparing temporal trends of different danger components and fire occurrence in the different study regions.

Keywords: Fire risk; Fire danger; Geographic information systems; Remote sensing; Logistic regression; Human factors; Fuel moisture content; Lightning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:221:y:2010:i:1:p:46-58

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2008.11.017

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