Forest fires: fire behavior

Endorsed by
Motivation

Understandding the manner in which a fire reacts to the variables of fuel, weather, and topography, including variables as rate of spread and intensity, can help both in fighting the already ignited fires and in .

 

 

Potential Solutions

Policy makers and management agencies require information on wildfire probability, behaviour and spatio-temporal trends to manage fire-prone landscapes and to evaluate the efficacy of plans. This includes:

  • A better understanding of the driving factors influencing fire spread and behaviour (climate and local weather conditions, land-use and land cover, land management policies) and of the physical mechanisms leading to extreme fire behaviour
  • Reliable and harmonised Fuel Classification Maps (FCMs)

Rationale & related CM function(s)

Describe the impacts of extreme climatology (heat waves, wind dynamics) on fire spread and behaviour.
Develop accurate predictions of the effects of extreme fire behavior on humans and infrastructures in vulnerable areas such as the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI).
Identify the interactions between fuel characteristics, topography, weather creating the conditions for extreme fire behavior.
eu Portfolio of Solutions web site has been initially developed in the scope of DRIVER+ project. Today, the service is managed by AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH., for the benefit of the European Management. PoS is endorsed and supported by the Disaster Competence Network Austria (DCNA) as well as by the STAMINA and TeamAware H2020 projects.