The Daily Fire Hazard Index: A Fire Danger Rating Method for Mediterranean Areas
Scuola di Ingegneria Aerospaziale, Sapienza University of Rome, 00138 Rome, Italy
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†
Current address: Earth Observation Satellite Images Applications Lab (EOSIAL), School of Aerospace Engineering (SIA), Sapienza University of Rome, Via Salaria 851, 00138 Rome, Italy.
‡
These authors contributed equally to this work.
Remote Sens. 2020, 12(15), 2356; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12152356
Received: 30 June 2020
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Revised: 17 July 2020
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Accepted: 17 July 2020
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Published: 22 July 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Satellite Remote Sensing Applications for Fire Management)
Mediterranean forests are gravely affected by wildfires, and despite the increased prevention effort of competent authorities in the past few decades, the yearly number of fires and the consequent damage has not decreased significantly. To this end, a number of dynamical methods have been developed in order to produce short-term hazard indices, such as the Fire Probability Index and the Fire Weather Index. The possibility to estimate the fire hazard is based on the observation that there is a relationship between the characteristics of the vegetation (i.e., the fuel), in terms of abundance and moisture content, and the probability of fire insurgence. The density, type, and moisture content of the vegetation are modeled using custom fuel maps, developed using the latest Corine Land Cover, and using a number of indices such as the NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), Global Vegetation Moisture Index (GVMI), and the evapotranspiration, derived from daily satellite imagery. This paper shows how the algorithm for the calculation of the Fire Potential Index (FPI) was improved by taking into account the effect of wind speed, topography, and local solar illumination through a simple temperature correction, preserving the straightforward structure of the FPI algorithm. The results were validated on the Italian region of Sardinia using official wildfire records provided by the regional administration.
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Keywords:
wildfires; mediterranean; hazard; MODIS
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MDPI and ACS Style
Laneve, G.; Pampanoni, V.; Uddien Shaik, R. The Daily Fire Hazard Index: A Fire Danger Rating Method for Mediterranean Areas. Remote Sens. 2020, 12, 2356. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12152356
AMA Style
Laneve G, Pampanoni V, Uddien Shaik R. The Daily Fire Hazard Index: A Fire Danger Rating Method for Mediterranean Areas. Remote Sensing. 2020; 12(15):2356. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12152356
Chicago/Turabian StyleLaneve, Giovanni, Valerio Pampanoni, and Riyaaz Uddien Shaik. 2020. "The Daily Fire Hazard Index: A Fire Danger Rating Method for Mediterranean Areas" Remote Sensing 12, no. 15: 2356. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12152356
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