Towards an Integrated Approach to Wildfire Risk Assessment: When, Where, What and How May the Landscapes Burn

Abstract

This paper presents a review of concepts related to wildfire risk assessment, including the determination of fire ignition and propagation (fire danger), the extent to which fire may spatially overlap with valued assets (exposure), and the potential losses and resilience to those losses (vulnerability). This is followed by a brief discussion of how these concepts can be integrated and connected to mitigation and adaptation efforts. We then review operational fire risk systems in place in various parts of the world. Finally, we propose an integrated fire risk system being developed under the FirEUrisk European project, as an example of how the different risk components (including danger, exposure and vulnerability) can be generated and combined into synthetic risk indices to provide a more comprehensive wildfire risk assessment, but also to consider where and on what variables reduction efforts should be stressed and to envisage policies to be better adapted to future fire regimes. Climate and socio-economic changes entail that wildfires are becoming even more a critical environmental hazard; extreme fires are observed in many areas of the world that regularly experience fire, yet fire activity is also increasing in areas where wildfires were previously rare. To mitigate the negative impacts of fire, those responsible for managing risk must leverage the information available through the risk assessment process, along with an improved understanding on how the various components of risk can be targeted to improve and optimize the many strategies for mitigation and adaptation to an increasing fire risk.

Assessing cross-boundary wildfire hazard, transmission, and exposure to communities in the Italy-France Maritime cooperation area

“…These predictions offer an assessment of expected wildfires in terms of potential hazard and transmission, and form the basis for developing consistent risk management strategies in the IFM cooperation area or elsewhere. The estimation of wildfire risk or exposure stem from the potential effects of a large set of plausible large wildfire episodes and aim at quantitative assessments rather than qualitative indices (Calkin et al, 2011;Oom et al, 2022;Chuvieco et al, 2023). To date, only a few studies have employed comparable wildfire modeling techniques across such a vast domain to explore wildfire hazard, transmission, and exposure at fine resolutions in the Euro-Mediterranean area (Alcasena et al, 2019(Alcasena et al, , 2021: our study is among this small group, encompassing numerous communities and providing a level of detail not often seen within the Euro-Mediterranean area.…”

“…On the whole, despite the escalating threat and increasing losses from unprecedented catastrophic wildfires occurred in recent years and likely occurring in future decades under changing climate conditions, wildfire risk assessment varies widely among EU countries and often, due to fire regime and environmental specificities, follows different national or even regional approaches not fully comparable (Oom et al, 2022). To address the lack of a comprehensive pan-European modeling and risk assessment system, a number of EU regulations and projects are progressively emphasizing the need for an EU-scale approach, as well as for a harmonization of procedures for wildfire risk assessment and for improving the actions of EU member states and cross-border regions in preventing and managing wildfires (Chuvieco et al, 2023). We advocate for the need to predict potential large and severe wildfires and assess potential hazard and exposure over vast domains in order to manage wildfires more effectively and prioritize risk prevention and mitigation strategies.…”

“…Nevertheless, accounting for the risks posed by large wildfires involves adequate consideration of their propagation and behavior potential in complex terrain and large landscapes, while taking into account several factors such as ignition patterns and fire regime, slope, fuel properties and moisture, historical weather and winds (Ager et al, 2011). In this paper, we will adopt the definitions of wildfire hazard (danger), exposure and risk of Chuvieco et al (2023), and the definition of transmission of Ager et al (2014).…”

40-Year Fire History Reconstruction from Landsat Data in a Mediterranean Area of North Africa Following International Standards

“…Specifically, we aim to: (1) generate a BA product from the Landsat Collection-2 Surface Reflectance (LC2SR) product covering the 1984-2023 period; (2) assess its spatiotemporal consistency; (3) provide pieces of evidence for a significantly revised BA estimate compared to existing BA products (GABAM, FireCCI51, C3SBA11, MCD64A1, and EFFIS) and a ground-based fire dataset. This work constitutes the mandatory initial step for creating a spatially explicit BA database following international standards for the whole of Algeria to further open a major research field for fire hazard, impacts and vulnerability assessments that lead to firefighting and fire management policies [47].…”

Fire Vulnerability, Resilience, and Recovery Rates of Mediterranean Pine Forests Using a 33-Year Time Series of Satellite Imagery

“…Forest fires propagate faster on steep slopes, intensifying the risk in such regions. Regions characterized by steep gradients are prone to fire propagation, whereas places with a plain topography have reduced susceptibility [70,71]. In addition, areas with steeper slopes are more susceptible to soil erosion and face greater regeneration and recovery challenges [71,72], which lead to increased vulnerability.…”