Pan-European Wildfire Risk Assessment- preliminary version

Abstract

Wildfire, as a global phenomenon, is an integral part of the Earth system that affects different regions in diverse ways resulting in variable levels of long-lasting impacts to environmental, social, and economic systems. In a context where extreme and high severity events are becoming more frequent, it is crucial to respond with a more robust preparedness and planning, identifying the risks posed by wildland fires, fostering better fire management policy tools, and developing mitigation strategies accordingly. However, scope and methods for wildfire risk assessment vary widely among countries leading to different regional/national approaches not always comparable, although wildfires are often transborder events and may affect several countries simultaneously. The elaborateness of these assessments is often related to the impact of fires in the corresponding regions, with countries more often confronted with wildfires being more prepared by having more elaborated and detailed wildfire risk maps at country/regional level, although based on the specificities of each country. To integrate currently incompatible approaches, harmonised procedures for wildfire risk assessment are needed at the pan-European scale, enhancing planning and coordination of prevention, preparedness, and cross-border firefighting actions to mitigate the damaging effects of wildfires. The development of a pan-European approach follows from a series of European Union (EU) regulations requiring the European Commission (EC) to have a wide overview of the wildfire risk in Europe, to support the actions of its Member States and to ensure compliance in the implementation of EU regulations related to wildfires. The conceptualization of the European Wildfire Risk Assessment (WRA) as the combined impact of wildfire hazard on people, ecosystems, and goods exposed in vulnerable areas, explicitly accounts for the multiplicity of risk dimensions and sources of uncertainty. Already serving as an integrated framework for gathering the European countries’ experience on fire management and risk, it will support the inter-comparison of WRA among countries, with the aim to complement existing national WRA with a simpler, but harmonised, methodology. A semi-quantitative approach, designed to be robust to uncertainty and flexible in ingesting new components, is currently under development in close cooperation with the EC Joint Research Center (JRC), other Commission services, and the Commission Expert Group on Forest Fires which is now composed of fire management representatives from 43 countries in the region. Additionally, the harmonised framework can serve as a first approach to assess wildfire risk in those countries that have not yet performed a national WRA, and as a guideline for extending the approach to larger areas, where data coverage may be scarcer and more uncertain.