Fatalities in Wildland Fires From 1945 to 2015 in Sardinia (Italy)

Cardíl, Adrián; Delogu, Giuseppe; Molina-Terrén, Domingo M.

doi:10.1590/01047760201723022266

Cited by 13 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…These catastrophic events are mostly caused by humans, often ignite nearby urban areas or roads, spread for long distances, expose a large number of structures, and affect valued natural resources (Ager, Preisler, Arca, Spano, & Salis, 2014; Sergi Costafreda‐Aumedes, Comas, & Vega‐Garcia, 2017; Ricotta, Bajocco, Guglietta, & Conedera, 2018; Salis, Ager, Finney, Arca, & Spano, 2013). Indeed, the last 15 years have witnessed some of the most damaging wildfires ever experienced in southern EU countries, which have caused numerous causalties and substantial economic losses despite increasing investments in fire suppression (Cardil, Delogu, & Molina‐Terran, 2017; Moritz et al., 2014). While it has been suggested that improvements in prevention, detection, and suppression have largely contributed to the observed decreasing trends in the number of fires and area burned, large‐fire occurrence trends remain uncertain, depending on period of observation, study area and large‐fire definition threshold values (Jiménez‐Ruano, Rodrigues Mimbrero, & de la Riva Fernández, 2017; Raftoyannis et al., 2014; San‐Miguel‐Ayanz, Moreno, & Camia, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geospatial Modeling of Containment Probability for Escaped Wildfires in a Mediterranean Region

et al. 2020

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Despite escalating expenditures in firefighting, extreme fire events continue to pose a major threat to ecosystem services and human communities in Mediterranean areas. Developing a safe and effective fire response is paramount to efficiently restrict fire spread, reduce negative effects to natural values, prevent residential housing losses, and avoid causalties. Though current fire policies in most countries demand full suppression, few studies have attempted to identify the strategic locations where firefighting efforts would likely contain catastrophic fire events. The success in containing those fires that escape initial attack is determined by diverse structural factors such as ground accessibility, airborne support, barriers to surface fire spread, and vegetation impedance. In this study, we predicted the success in fire containment across Catalonia (northeastern Spain) using a model generated with random forest from detailed geospatial data and a set of 73 fire perimeters for the period 2008-2016. The model attained a high predictive performance (AUC = 0.88), and the results were provided at fine resolution (25 m) for the entire study area (32,108 km 2). The highest success rates were found in agricultural plains along the nonburnable barriers such as major road corridors and largest rivers. Low levels of containment likelihood were predicted for dense forest lands and steep-relief mountainous areas. The results can assist in suppression resource pre-positioning and extended attack decision making, but also in strategic fuels management oriented at creating defensive locations and fragmenting the landscape in operational firefighting areas. Our modeling workflow and methods may serve as a baseline to generate locally adapted models in fire-prone areas elsewhere.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geospatial Modeling of Containment Probability for Escaped Wildfires in a Mediterranean Region

et al. 2020

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“…In spite of the above, uncertainty still exists for some information because of the non-scientific nature of some data sources. Newspaper and periodical libraries have been used before as data sources in the study of natural hazards (Llasat et al 2009;Diakakis et al 2012;Cardil et al 2017), but they potentially add subjective information. To deal with this, the circumstances under which each incident occurred were described through a set of selected variables (shown in Table 2 and Fig.…”

Section: Data Quality and Uncertaintiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many catastrophic cases were recorded in recent years in Southern Europe (Viegas et al 2006;, some of them very lately (Diakakis et al 2016;Cardil et al 2017). As a reference, some of these remarkable forest fire events are:…”

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confidence: 99%

Analysis of forest fire fatalities in Southern Europe: Spain, Portugal, Greece and Sardinia (Italy)

Molina-Terrén

Xanthopoulos²,

Diakakis

et al. 2019

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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137

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Wildfire fatalities remain a significant problem in Mediterranean Europe. Although there is a strong inter-annual variability with regard to their number, repeated tragic accidents remind us of this grim occurrence, despite the increasing firefighting capacity aimed to improve human safety. In this paper, we present an analysis of the 865 fatalities caused by wildfires in the 1945–2016 period. Data originating from national databases were merged, contextual and weather factors related to the accidents that caused these deaths were documented and analysed to explore probable relationships with the number and type of fatalities. Results show a major rise of fatalities in late 1970s in the four regions of Greece, Sardinia (Italy), Spain and Portugal. Fatalities present a strong seasonality in summer months, as expected. Overall, Spain has the highest absolute numbers of fatalities; however, normalisations by population, and burned and forest area show that annual number of fatalities is comparatively smaller. Certain other factors showed correlation with mortality. Civilians were the most affected group in Greece (65%) and Sardinia (58%), but not in Spain and Portugal. Findings indicate that an in-depth revision of fire-management policies and practices is required, with emphasis on prevention planning in urban areas, and better training of the firefighting resources.

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“…Table S2; [195][196][197] Firefighting personnel fatalities 4.86 The higher the number the higher the weight…”

Section: Broad Incident Categoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating Socioecological Wildfire Effects in Greece with a Novel Numerical Index

Palaiologou

Kalabokidis

Day

et al. 2020

Fire

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Large-scale wildfires have become more frequent in Greece and coupled with the country’s limited economic resources, investments in both pre-fire planning and post-fire rehabilitation for most affected areas are not feasible. From the perspective of forest and fire management agencies, the severity and importance of fire effects are evaluated based only on total area burned, while from a societal standpoint, by the number of fatalities and destroyed houses. A holistic approach to rank wildfires with an inclusive assessment of all their effects is missing. We developed a new evaluation and ranking index based on expert judgment, the study of 50 large-scale fire events in Greece and a detailed review of the literature, to develop a set of categories and criteria to assess ecological and socioeconomic effects of wildfires. The Fire Inventory and Ranking of Effects (FIRE) Index provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use semi-numeric framework that combines scores from seven fire effects categories and 56 criteria through a user-friendly web-platform. The seven categories include fire effects on landscape and vegetation, general environmental impacts, regeneration potential and vegetation recovery, casualties and fatalities, destruction and damages to infrastructure, economic losses, and firefighting and wildfire suppression. Each of the 56 criteria within these categories describes a different anticipated fire effect. The magnitude of each fire effect criterion is estimated by predefined ranked choices by one or more persons/assessors in a multi-level evaluation procedure. We apply the FIRE Index assessment to a significant 5900-ha wildfire that occurred in 2011 in northern Greece, including a sensitivity analysis of how different category weights impact the final index score. More diverse metrics to assess wildfire effects will help address the complex social and biophysical dimensions of the wildfire governance challenge and help guide pre- and post-fire management actions.

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Fatalities in Wildland Fires From 1945 to 2015 in Sardinia (Italy)

Cited by 13 publications

References 13 publications

Geospatial Modeling of Containment Probability for Escaped Wildfires in a Mediterranean Region

Geospatial Modeling of Containment Probability for Escaped Wildfires in a Mediterranean Region

Analysis of forest fire fatalities in Southern Europe: Spain, Portugal, Greece and Sardinia (Italy)

Evaluating Socioecological Wildfire Effects in Greece with a Novel Numerical Index

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