Kostas Kalabokidis

Integrating new methods and tools in fire danger rating

Prevention is one of the most important stages in wildfire and other natural hazard management regimes. Fire danger rating systems have been adopted by many developed countries dealing with wildfire prevention and pre-suppression planning, so that civil protection agencies are able to define areas with high probabilities of fire ignition and resort to necessary actions. This present paper presents a fire ignition risk scheme, developed in the study area of Lesvos Island, Greece, that can be an integral component of a quantitative Fire Danger Rating System. The proposed methodology estimates the geo-spatial fire risk regardless of fire causes or expected burned area, and it has the ability of forecasting based on meteorological data. The main output of the proposed scheme is the Fire Ignition Index, which is based on three other indices: Fire Weather Index, Fire Hazard Index, and Fire Risk Index. These indices are not just a relative probability for fire occurrence, but a rather quantitative assessment of fire danger in a systematic way. Remote sensing data from the high-resolution QuickBird and the Landsat ETM satellite sensors were utilised in order to provide part of the input parameters to the scheme, while Remote Automatic Weather Stations and the SKIRON/Eta weather forecasting system provided real-time and forecasted meteorological data, respectively. Geographic Information Systems were used for management and spatial analyses of the input parameters. The relationship between wildfire occurrence and the input parameters was investigated by neural networks whose training was based on historical data.

Introducing wildfire into forest management planning: towards a conceptual approach

Wildfire potential was introduced as a function in the inventory and evaluation methodology of forest resources management, through a conceptual classification of fire danger and fire resistance. Fire occurrence and growth are controlled by complex and interrelated phenomena/factors that according to systems analysis were grouped into: (i) external factors (or fire danger), which formulate the surrounding environment of the forest in a large spatial and temporal scale; and (ii) internal factors (or fire resistance), which characterize the structure of the forest stands affecting flammability. Operations research techniques were employed based on the direct method of rating to evaluate the magnitude of each factor, including interactions among factors. This procedure has resulted in the synthesis of a common interval scale of four fire danger and four fire resistance classes. The inventory and evaluation procedure was accomplished in three stages concluding with synthesis of the evaluation results of all information levels (using the quality and weight of each factor). Within this synthesis, it becomes possible to calculate the function class (fire danger) and/or the suitability class (fire resistance) of each unit area and map their distribution in the forest. The proposed methodology constitutes a theoretical background on which an analytical and practical inventory procedure for forest fire potential can be developed; it also highlights the direction towards which fire management research should focus on assisting forest management and evaluation of forest functions.

Towards a semantics-based approach in the development of geographic portals

As the demand for geospatial data increases, the lack of efficient ways to find suitable information becomes critical. In this paper, a new methodology for knowledge discovery in geographic portals is presented. Based on the Semantic Web, our approach exploits the Resource Description Framework (RDF) in order to describe the geoportals information with ontology-based metadata. When users traverse from page to page in the portal, they take advantage of the metadata infrastructure to navigate easily through data of interest. New metadata descriptions are published in the geoportal according to the RDF schemas.

Virtual Fire: A web-based GIS platform for forest fire control

Abstract Α web-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) platform – named Virtual Fire – for forest fire control has been developed to easily, validly and promptly share and utilize information and tools among firefighting forces. This state-of-the-art system enables fire management professionals to take advantage of GIS capabilities without needing to locally install complex software components. Fire management professionals can locate fire service vehicles and other resources online and in real-time. Fire patrol aircrafts and vehicles may use tracking devices to send their coordinates directly to the platform. Cameras can augment these data by transmitting images of high-risk areas into the graphical interface of the system. Furthermore, the system provides the geographical representation of fire ignition probability and identifies high-risk areas at different local regions daily, based on a high performance computing (HPC) pilot application that runs on Windows HPC Server. Real-time data from remote automatic weather stations and weather maps based on a weather forecasting system provide vital weather data needed for fire prevention and early warning. By using these methods and a variety of fire management information and tools, the end-users are given the ability to design an operational plan to encompass the forest fire, choosing the best ways to put the fire out within the proper recourses and time.

Wind characteristics and mapping for power production in the Island of Lesvos, Greece

This study investigated the wind characteristics of the island of Lesvos, Greece, with the objective of providing the necessary data for identifying the wind power production capabilities of the island. Weather patterns were examined using weather data from four Remote Automatic Weather Stations. Specific tools were used to produce the necessary windroses, Weibull curves and charts that helped to understand the prevailing wind characteristics. By using the tools of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WAsP) as the basic calculation platform, a wind map was produced portraying the wind speeds that prevail at a height of 10m above ground level. The results of the analysis were tested and evaluated with measurements from 15 wind turbine sites by creating six alternative scenarios. The optimum scenario was used to investigate the installation of a small wind farm with five wind turbines, of 3 MW total capacity.

Decision support system for forest fire protection in the Euro-Mediterranean region

This paper describes the development of a decision support system (DSS) for prevention planning and emergency management of forest fire events that incorporates weather data management, a geographical data viewer, a priori danger forecasting and fire propagation modeling, automatic fire detection, and optimal resource dispatching. Collection, input, storage, management, and analysis of the information rely on advanced and automated methodologies using remote sensing, GPS, digital mapping, and geographic information systems. The results included short-term dynamic fire danger indices developed for improved and realistic prevention and pre-suppression planning. An automatic fire detection technology based on infrared video was developed and successfully tested on site. Several models for understanding fire propagation on forest fires have been proposed for practical application. Additionally, a DSS was developed with the innovation of covering wildland fire hazard management entirely, providing a complete coverage of technical and administrative activities that support decision makers in real time. The DSS was tested for high fire seasons in two different sites in South Europe.

Wildland Fire Governance: Perspectives from Greece

Summer wildfires blazing across the landscapes of the northern Mediterranean invariably galvanize public attention and attract firefighting resources from the European Union and beyond. Institutions, including not only laws and policies, but also those who implement the policies, such as public firefighting groups, and local-to-national-scale departments and agencies, have a strong influence on environmental events such as wildfire occurrence and on societys role in managing the risk associated with such events. Indeed, wildfire serves as a useful metaphor for many environmental problems confronting society today. In this paper, we examine policies, rules, and practices that impede effective governance of wildfire threat in the fire-prone landscapes of Greece. We suggest ways how institutional impediments, such as funding levels and viable implementation options, might be improved. We stress the importance of understanding the roles played by social institutions, values, and practices.

Prescribed burning in uneven-aged stand management of ponderosa pine/douglas fir forests

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of low intensity prescribed fires on wildfire hazard reduction, site preparation and tree mortality of uneven-aged managed ponderosa pine/Douglas fir ( Pinus ponderosa/Pseudotsuga menziesii ) forests. The study also provided the opportunity to determine the effects of uneven-aged silviculture on fire hazards. Burning followed the individual-tree selection cutting and full-tree utilization of an uneven-aged silvicultural prescription, which was developed for two stands in western Montana, U.S.A. Prescribed burning, following the full-tree utilization, proved to have no usefulness on fire hazard reduction. Uneven-aged cutting without any fuel management treatment showed substantial fire behavior potential, far beyond the control limit of direct attack methods. Residual duff depth was not significantly different between the burned and the unburned treatment units. Mineral soil exposure of the burned unit was significantly greater than the unburned unit in only one of the study stands. Removal of the litter fuels was significantly greater in the burned units, contributing to a receptive seedbed for natural regeneration of shade-intolerant tree species. Fire succeeded in eliminating Douglas fir regeneration. Losses of ponderosa pine seedlings were substantial, but a few saplings and seedlings did survive the fire. Fire also killed 6·5 to 9% of the overstory trees (over 3 m in height). Overstory mortality was statistically significant, but this mortality was confined to smaller trees (less than 12 cm in d.b.h.). Guidelines are offered for a safe and effective prescribed burning under standing timber in ponderosa pine stands.

Porting of a wildfire risk and fire spread application into a cloud computing environment

Effective wildfire management is an essential part of forest firefighting strategies to minimize damage to land resources and loss of human lives. Wildfire management tools often require a large number of computing resources at a specific time. Such computing resources are not affordable to local fire agencies because of the extreme upfront costs on hardware and software. The emerging cloud computing technology can be a cost- and result-effective alternative. The purpose of this paper is to present the development and the implementation of a state-of-the-art application running in cloud computing, composed of a wildfire risk and a wildfire spread simulation service. The two above applications are delivered within a web-based interactive platform to the fire management agencies as Software as a Service (SaaS). The wildfire risk service calculates and provides daily to the end-user maps of the hourly forecasted fire risk for the next 112 hours in high spatiotemporal resolution, based on forecasted meteorological data. In addition, actual fire risk is calculated hourly, based on meteorological conditions provided by remote automatic weather stations. Regarding the wildfire behavior simulation service, end users can simulate the fire spread by simply providing the ignition point and the projected duration of the fire, based on the HFire algorithm. The efficiency of the proposed solution is based on the flexibility to scale up or down the number of computing nodes needed for the requested processing. In this context, end users will be charged only for their consumed processing time and only during the actual wildfire confrontation period. The system utilizes both commercial and open source cloud resources. The current prototype is applied in the study area of Lesvos Island, Greece, but its flexibility enables expansion in different geographical areas.

Forest mapping by geoinformatics for landscape fire behaviour modelling in coastal forests, Greece

This study aims at quantifying and mapping fire-related characteristics of forest structure through field inventories, statistics, remote sensing, and geographical information systems in the island of Lesvos, northeast Aegean Sea, Greece. Simulation of fire behaviour requires forest biomass inputs that describe surface fuel types/models along with canopy fuel properties, such as canopy cover, stand height, crown base height, and crown bulk density, to accurately predict surface and crown fire spread and spotting potential. Forest canopy characteristics and other vegetation attributes were sampled and derived in over 100 field plots, the majority of which were located in coastal pine forest stands. Regression models involving four dependent forest stand variables (stand height, canopy cover, crown base height, and crown bulk density) were developed using generalized additive models. The values of adjusted R 2 were 0.72 for stand height, 0.68 for canopy cover, 0.51 for crown base height, and 0.33 for crown bulk density. These regression models were used to create forest fuel characteristics layers, which can be used as inputs to fire management applications and state-of-the-art landscape-scale fire behaviour models.