Assessment of risks constraining the sustainable development of forest ecosystems in the Saïda Mountains (Algeria) by using FMECA approach

Abstract

Mountain forest ecosystems and other biodiversity reserves represent “safety nets” for many communities for their livelihoods. They are economi-cally important sources of wood, fodder, food and non-wood forest prod-ucts. Controlling. the sustainable management of forest ecosystems neces-sarily involves identifying and assessing their condition and circumstance. The method chosen to set the prerequisites for a strategy to safe-guard the cork oak forests, is the one used to identify failures in systems: Failure Mode Analysis and Criticality Evaluation (FMACE). The results sought are recorded in a matrix based on the following points: Identification of hazard and risk sources; Segmentation of the factors causing hazards; Risk evaluation (severity, frequency, non-Detection) (BOUCHAOUR-DJABEUR,2020). The use of the Failure mode effects and criticality analysis approach (FMECA) dedi-cated to risk management for the identification and assessment of risks is possible and highly appreciated. In order to understand the degradation pro-cess of forest formations in Saida Mountains (Algeria), two matrices from modified FMECA method allowed identification of 15 main defective targets. Identified failures have been grouped into 5 categories namely: organization-al, technical, professional, management and socio-economic in order to facil-itate their remediation. For each failure, a score was assigned, allowing clas-sification of breaches in order to set up an action plan based on priorities. Results from our present evaluation study based on the FMECA approach will allow various actors of forest and mountain domain to better under-stand the degradation of this natural space and help to make decisions and undertake valid remediation actions.