The development of a fire vulnerability index for the mediterranean region

The SIGRI (Sistema Integrato per la Gestione del Rischio Incendi) pilot project, funded by ASI (the Italian Space Agency), aims at developing an Integrated System for the Management of the Wild Fire Events. The system should provide satellite based products capable to help fire contrasting activities during all the phases: prevision, detection, and damage assessment/recovering. In particular, the paper concerns the development of a Fire Risk Index to be produced daily with the objective of showing the total level of risk for the area of interest and the zones of major concern within such area. In the European Community the member countries interested by forest fires are at least six: Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and Greece. The higher number of wild fires occurs in the western part of Spain and Portugal, in southern Italy and in the Mediterranean islands The idea to develop maps able to show the fire risk is based on the observation that there is a tight relationship between the fire and the characteristics of the fuel (vegetation type, density, humidity content), of the topography (slope, altitude, solar aspect angle) and the meteorological conditions (rainfall, wind direction and speed, air humidity, surface and air temperature). These parameters directly impact the proneness of a given area to the fire ignition and propagation. Since these quantities can be measured, notwithstanding the cause of the fire ignition, mainly due, in Italy, to human actions (more than 90% of the ignitions is intentional or accidental), could be unpredictable the behaviour of the fire can be considered strictly dependent from those and then it can be foreseen when such parameters are known.