7th Workshop on Forest Fire Management - EARSeL, European ...

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I - PRE-FIRE PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT
moves towards the crests, the intensity of fire is decreasing due to the
absence of trees.
3.2 - Advantages and problems of the fire risk built model
The established model with 5 factors has defined a map of fire intesity with
eight classes. Such a map was unavailable in the study area, although at
this stage the map still depends on relatively subjective procedures. The
map represents the result of modelling from available knowledge and data,
can serve needs of different researchers, and is important for policies and
socio-economic decision-makers. It can prioritize the anti-fire protection
measures according to the obtained fire risk level. The model has certain
advantages over fully-automated fire risk models which are too-data hungry
to be applied at a regional scale. This model can be easily extrapolated
to all the country if the functional capacities of GIS are used, because
they allow model integration with additional basic and factorial data and
code modification in order to analyse the data. The factorial morphological
maps (slope gradient and slope aspect) are more persistent with time than
the other used maps, i.e. land cover/use, urban expansion and proximity to
road network which must be updated and can change drastically through
years due to human activities. However, many difficulties have been
encountered. The use of one-lumped value for land cover/use in fire risk
modelling is sometimes an oversimplification of the real situation in which
fire shows complex spatial and temporal patterns. Future study should focus
on parameters [e.g., fuel loading (kg/m 2 ), surface to volume ratio, fuel
moisture content, fuel bed depth, particle density (kg/m 3 ), etc.] and methods
to capture this variability and to incorporate data in fire risk models.
References
Bonazountas, M., Kallidromitou, D., Kassomenos, P., 2006. A decision support
system for managing forest fire casualties. Journal of Environmental
Management, 84, 412-418.
ICONA, 1992. Los incendios forestales en Espana durante 1991. Instituto
Nacional para la Conversacion de la Naturaleza, MAPA, Madrid.
LNCSR-LMoA, 2002. Land cover/use maps of Lebanon at 1:20,000 scale.
Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research-Lebanese Ministry of
Agriculture.
Mitri, G.H., Gitas, I.Z., 2004. A semi-automated object oriented model for
burned area mapping in the Mediterranean region using Landsat-TM
imagery. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 13, 367-376.
Weise, D.R, Biging, G.S., 1997. A qualitative comparison of fire spread models
incorporating wind and slope effects. Forest Science, 43(2), 170-180.