Automated Burned Area Detection and Violation Monitoring Using Landsat-TM and VHR Data: An Engineering And Economic Study To Analyse Local Governance Performance In Sardinia (Italy)

Abstract

This study aims at analysing local government efficiency using EO data to focus on the construction of new buildings in burned areas. We detected all forests and pastures of Sardinia (Sardinia) that witnessed at least a one-hectare wildfire, for biennium 2005-2006, using Landsat-TM data.We then monitored all the burned areas for a period of at least 10 years following the wildfire, up until 2016, by using Landsat products and VHR imagery provided by the Sar-dinian Region.The idea was to verify compliance with the Italian Framework Law on forest fires, which prohibits the construction of any structure or infrastructure aimed at civil settlements on woods and pastures affected by a fire for the next ten years.We retrieved as many as 748 burned areas, over which 148 violations were detected. These data have been used to carry out an econometric pilot analysis. Results suggest that, in general, the emergence of violations is inversely related to wildfire dimensions and that, on average, law-breaking occurs within the first five years.