The Daily Fire Hazard Index: A Fire Danger Rating Method for Mediterranean Areas

Giovanni Laneve,Valerio Pampanoni,Riyaaz Uddien Shaik

doi:10.3390/rs12152356

Giovanni Laneve, Valerio Pampanoni + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12152356

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Journal: Remote sensing	Publication Date: Jul 22, 2020
Citations: 14	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Sapienza University of Rome

Abstract

Mediterranean forests are gravely affected by wildfires, and despite the increased prevention effort of competent authorities in the past few decades, the yearly number of fires and the consequent damage has not decreased significantly. To this end, a number of dynamical methods have been developed in order to produce short-term hazard indices, such as the Fire Probability Index and the Fire Weather Index. The possibility to estimate the fire hazard is based on the observation that there is a relationship between the characteristics of the vegetation (i.e., the fuel), in terms of abundance and moisture content, and the probability of fire insurgence. The density, type, and moisture content of the vegetation are modeled using custom fuel maps, developed using the latest Corine Land Cover, and using a number of indices such as the NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), Global Vegetation Moisture Index (GVMI), and the evapotranspiration, derived from daily satellite imagery. This paper shows how the algorithm for the calculation of the Fire Potential Index (FPI) was improved by taking into account the effect of wind speed, topography, and local solar illumination through a simple temperature correction, preserving the straightforward structure of the FPI algorithm. The results were validated on the Italian region of Sardinia using official wildfire records provided by the regional administration.

Highlights

The problem of forest fires affects all European countries, with varying degrees of gravity and sometimes with wildly different frequency
In order to assess the performance of the Daily Fire Hazard Index (DFHI) in predicting the fire hazard, daily DFHI values were compared to the latest official wildfire records in the area of interest, which at the time of writing date back to the year 2017
The area of interest, which consists of the region of Sardinia, is suitable for our purposes, since it is well known that the most damaging wildfires occur in days of strong Mistral winds [65]

Summary

Introduction

The problem of forest fires affects all European countries, with varying degrees of gravity and sometimes with wildly different frequency. Mediterranean countries tend to be the most affected, especially if the number of fires is scaled to their surface area. Despite an increased prevention effort and technological support for the decision makers, the average values of burnt areas and number of wildfires were barely affected. The S2IGI project was created in this context, as a result of a joint effort of The School of Aerospace Engineering of La Sapienza University, the Biometeorology Institute (IBIMET) of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), and the Sardinian-based company Nurjana Technologies, with the objective to create an integrated fire management information system. S2IGI aims to cover all three operative phases of firefighting, namely prevention, detection, and damage assessment, by providing state-of-the-art software applications and systems based on satellite technologies [5]. The Daily Fire Hazard Index (DFHI), in particular, enables data driven decisions in the pre-event phase, allowing decision makers to allocate resources on the territory on the basis of a model that uses up-to-date meteorological and satellite data to monitor the current state of vegetation Figure 1

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