A Decision Support System for forest fire management

Abstract

Forest fires are considered natural phenomena but the magnitude of the problem can be attributed to poor forest management and to the extreme weather conditions. Furthermore, the abolishment of traditional activities related to forests has sent away people from the forests that they used to protect them. The aforementioned reasons result in the annual destruction of large forest areas, agricultural cultivations, industries, animals and even human lives. At the same time, catastrophic floods entail the gradual desolation of the affected areas and large amounts of carbon dioxide along with smoke particles aggravate air quality. In the present paper, a Decision Support System is proposed capable to support policy makers and services to counteract wildfires destruction danger in lowland Pine forests. The system is composed of two major components: (a) A Wildfire Destruction Danger Index useful for preventive and suppressive measures planning and decision policy making and (b) a Forest Management Planning Decision Support System useful for fire risk reduction through forest management plan. The open architecture of the system allows incorporation of data coming from external sources e.g. satellite systems, meteorological stations etc. All its subsystems can stand alone so as to satisfy the needs of responsible organisations (peripheral institutions of fire brigade, forest inspection and local authorities). The proposed system can be both used as an intergraded operational tool in forest fire management and as a training tool for personnel of various services involved.