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

A forest fire hazard based on the estimation of tourist hot spot activities in Austria 53
The risk rating assumes that the fire risk is very high close to touristic
infrastructure and decreases with distance from the infrastructure together
with a decrease of intensity.
For the estimation of the influence of tourist activity on forest fires in a
district a rating has been done in merging the touristic infrastructure with
the tourist intensity, the percentage of the forest cover and the area of a
district with the following formula:
∑ζ i = (λ*ζ ic /DS + λ*ζ ihut /DS + λ*ζ ihi /DS) * Ø overnight * FC/DS
where λ represents the weight for touristic infrastructure per district, ζic represents the weight rating for the cable cars per district, ζihut the weight
for the huts in a district and ζihi the weight for the hiking trails in a district.
Øovernight symbolizes the mean number of overnight stays per district;
FC/DC indicates the percentage of Forest Cover in a district.
We defined different weights for the touristic infrastructures considered -
namely cable cars, huts and hiking trails - and calculated four different scenarios
in order to identify the relative touristic intensity in the individual
districts. In scenario I we assigned an equal weight for the touristic infrastructure.
In scenario II a weight of 10% was assumed for the cable cars,
for the huts a weight of 40% and for the hiking trails a weight of 50%. In
scenario III the weight of the cable cars was assumed to be 50%, the
weight of the huts 40% and the weight of the hiking trails 10%. In scenario
IV the weight assigned to the cable cars is 20%, the weight assigned
to the huts is 40% and the weight assigned to the hiking trails is 40%
respectively. Next we grouped the districts into five categories relative to
the number of forest fires that occurred between 2002 and 2008 and
opposed them to the calculated mean overall value as well as the mean
minimum and maximum value of the calculated scenarios.
N° forest fires Mean overall value Minimum Maximum
0 6.085 2,5 91.692
1 - 3 11.464 5 270.591
4 - 6 17.336 21 305.961
7 - 10 10.920 18 80.527
11 - 15 38.904 44 252.198
16 - 20 47.941 1.191 223.258
21 - 30 57.018 1.108 192.332
> 30 12.979 1.707 36.496
Table 1 - Mean overall value, minimum and maximum for four different scenarios.