A Methodological Approach to Address Economic Vulnerability to Wildfires in Europe

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

- Abstract: Phrases like “corrected by coefficients” and “integrated throughout the time necessary” read vaguely. Please specify for clarity.

- The abstract needs improvements to add sufficient detail about validation, data sources, or statistical approaches. Moreover, its conclusion should be improved to give concrete guidance for investment decisions.

- Line 29-38: The shift from fire benefits to fire damage to vulnerability modeling needs better linking sentences.

- I think there is an excessive re-stating of the ideas “fire vulnerability’s relation to socio-economic” and ignoring the link between wildfire vulnerability and climate change trends. Please improve this part.

- Line 62-64: Despite acknowledging that local-scale assessments are different, the authors do not explain how generalizations across Europe avoid masking local vulnerabilities. This point should be clarified in the discussion section as well.

- Line 64: Authors considered the 1 km² spatial resolution as appropriate for continental comparisons, but do not provide a strong rationale or comparative alternatives.

- Overall, the introduction section lacks reviews on fire vulnerability modeling and valuation approaches. Incorporating insights from recent review literature (e.g., https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-024-01722-w) could improve the section. 

- Please better define and specify terms like "resilience", "coping capacity", and "penalty in the range 0 to 1".

- I believe that your introduction lacks a central research question or hypothesis to frame the study’s direction and rationale. Please work on this part.

- I recommended providing a flowchart in the methodology section to give an overview of the study’s steps. Further, I strongly recommend better justifications on issues such as the exclusion of important infrastructure (e.g., roads, cables, etc.) and non-market values (e.g., public health, recreation, etc.), the outdated (e.g., wine data from 2007–2008), unverified data sources (NUMBEO), multi-scales and sources of data (NUTS1, NUTS2, national, 1 km²), and assuming 2021 as a fixed reference year without exploring how inflation or land use changes affect values over time.

- Recheck Eq. 1 for correct use of notations.

- I see an oversimplification of ecological and economic concepts. Such as: (1) The first equation assumes constant annual benefit loss for the entire recovery period, which is unrealistic. In nature, recovery is usually nonlinear. (2) Using a single fixed discount rate across scenarios ignores possible changes in social time preference or capital cost. (3) The second equation uses a logistic growth function, but the ecological realism of using such a model for forest recovery (especially after fire) is not critically assessed. Please JUSTIFY.

- The discussion and limitations sections are superficial and require significant improvements to address simplifications, data gaps, model assumptions, and computational constraints.

- Line 787: The call for “increasing the capacity of national and regional governance” is vague and lacks specific, actionable recommendations.

- Line 808: While the authors hope to “stimulate research,” they do give no framework or priority list for what kinds of empirical estimates or countries should be focused on next. Please work on this part.

 

Author Response

Reviewer 1

 Abstract: Phrases like “corrected by coefficients” and “integrated throughout the time necessary” read vaguely. Please specify for clarity.

- The abstract needs improvements to add sufficient detail about validation, data sources, or statistical approaches. Moreover, its conclusion should be improved to give concrete guidance for investment decisions.

We have amended the abstract following the considerations suggested.

- Line 29-38: The shift from fire benefits to fire damage to vulnerability modeling needs better linking sentences.

This part has been reviewed to make a smoother transition between sentences 

- I think there is an excessive re-stating of the ideas “fire vulnerability’s relation to socio-economic” and ignoring the link between wildfire vulnerability and climate change trends. Please improve this part.

We added a sentence to emphasise the importance that climate change has on wildfire vulnerability This is now mentioned in the second paragraph of the introduction (40-46).

- Line 62-64: Despite acknowledging that local-scale assessments are different, the authors do not explain how generalizations across Europe avoid masking local vulnerabilities. This point should be clarified in the discussion section as well.

The reviewer is right when he says that our approach may mask local specificity in the assessment of local vulnerabilities. These can be considered providing detailed (granular) information on resilience (coping capacity and recovery time). An attempt to work with this approach where recovery time is a function of a range of natural, ecological and environmental parameters at fine resolution is proposed by Román et al. 2013 for Spain. However, in our study, this approach could not be replicated because of the lack of the necessary information for the whole European territory selected. This is now explained in the discussion at session 5.2.

- Line 64: Authors considered the 1 km² spatial resolution as appropriate for continental comparisons, but do not provide a strong rationale or comparative alternatives.

We selected this spatial resolution for two reasons: first, to be consistent with other tasks of the FirEUrisk project, which this study is part of. Second, because it was a good trade-off between the different spatial resolutions of the input data that was used for this study. Since the data are produced by different agencies and from different methods, the resolution of the input data ranges widely, from 1 hectare to a NUT region. 1 km2 was a reasonable intermediate cell size, which still is able to characterize the spatial diversity of vulnerability conditions. Finally, 1 km2 is also the resolution of INCA project of the JRC (see text for details), which was the source for some of the services evaluated in this paper. This is now clarified at lines 64 to 74.

- Overall, the introduction section lacks reviews on fire vulnerability modeling and valuation approaches. Incorporating insights from recent review literature (e.g., https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-024-01722-w) could improve the section. 

There are already cited references to the approach of vulnerability modelling upon which we build our analysis as reported in the fourth paragraph of the Introduction. In addition, we have added other studies to take into consideration some recent reviews addressing the topic of vulnerability such as the one suggested by the reviewer.

- Please better define and specify terms like "resilience", "coping capacity", and "penalty in the range 0 to 1".

This is now better explained in the fourth paragraph from line 74 to 83.

- I believe that your introduction lacks a central research question or hypothesis to frame the study’s direction and rationale. Please work on this part.

We have reformulated the Introduction at the beginning of the fourth paragraph (60-64) to better present the research question of this study.

- I recommended providing a flowchart in the methodology section to give an overview of the study’s steps.

We decided to introduce a diagram at the beginning of the methodology to show the relations between the several components necessary to assess damage: valuation of the natural assets; fire intensity simulation; and resilience. 

Further, I strongly recommend better justifications on issues such as the exclusion of important infrastructure (e.g., roads, cables, etc.) and non-market values (e.g., public health, recreation, etc.), the outdated (e.g., wine data from 2007–2008), unverified data sources (NUMBEO), multi-scales and sources of data (NUTS1, NUTS2, national, 1 km²), and assuming 2021 as a fixed reference year without exploring how inflation or land use changes affect values over time.

The focus of this paper is on natural capital, provisioning and regulating ecosystem services values. In addition, considering the importance of manufactured capital, we have included residential properties. However, several other infrastructures such as cable, roads, railways may be affected. We have not included these capitals because of the difficulty to build a database at Europeans scale of these infrastructures and estimate their damage. This was already explained in the discussion and now furtherly emphasised.

It was possible to find data at EU scale provided by EUROSTAT for several agricultural and forestry assets. Data referring to wine are quite old, because EUROSTAT has updated only the holdings and the area of vineyards, not the production of wine. However, we consider that information on wine was the best centralised information reported for the entire European territory. In addition, it is consistent with the other variables used (timber, crop production etc.) that are coming from the same source. The use of old information on the production of wine has not produced distorted estimates of vineyards. It is possible to see from the maps generated that the “prestigious” vineyards (some of them in France and Italy) are valued much more than €100,000/ha as we could expect, with an average value of assets among several wine producers in the range €30-60k/ha. Difficulties with the use of data at the appropriate scale are now reported in the discussion and limits of this study. 

Similar difficulties were found to retrieve the value of properties. However, we managed to assess granular value of residential properties starting from national estimates reported by NUMBEO that, although not peer reviewed, provided ballpark figures for national and regional scales. We managed to produce granular estimates by correlating these ballpark values with estimates of local GDP per capita, starting from the relationship that where GDP is higher the value of property must be higher. Details are provided at section 3.3. Comments on the reliability of these estimates are proposed in the discussion.

It is not possible to provide other non-market values in the European context as suggested by the reviewer because of lack of data (for instance for public health). These values are often neglected by European literature while considered by the American academia. This is also commented on in the discussions.

Different scales of data were used according to their availability as reported in the Appendix 1. For the socio-economic information where possible, we used the most granular information available (NUTS 2), otherwise we opted for NUTS 1.

Regarding economic estimates, these are static snapshots that refer to a point in time. We decided to use the 2021 Euro currency because that is the time we started addressing the values of natural capital and ecosystem services affected by wildfires in the H2020 FirEurisk project, and for consistency the damage is measured at the same time. It is possible to include the effect of inflation using the consumer price index (or other indices) to convert the economic estimates to a different time. However, this is not relevant for this study. The most important thing is to compare monetary benefits and costs in a consistent way. If we reported all the estimates in 2024 value, the relative change between them would not change.

- Recheck Eq. 1 for correct use of notations.

Checked

- I see an oversimplification of ecological and economic concepts. Such as: (1) The first equation assumes constant annual benefit loss for the entire recovery period, which is unrealistic. In nature, recovery is usually nonlinear. (2) Using a single fixed discount rate across scenarios ignores possible changes in social time preference or capital cost. (3) The second equation uses a logistic growth function, but the ecological realism of using such a model for forest recovery (especially after fire) is not critically assessed. Please JUSTIFY.

The use of equation 1 implies that benefits can only be constant. Alternatives to consider non constant value are possible, for instance using an empirical discounted cash flow. However, the choice of constant benefits is not unrealistic because even if the natural capital recovers over time the economic benefit of the product that the natural capital generates (olives, timber, fruits, grapes, etc.) is lost until the natural capital asset is able to generate that product. Several authors are using this approach and references to these studies are made in the method.

To make an example, we can report the case of fruit trees or olive groves. A (totally or partially) burned olive grove cannot produce fruits within 5 years from the fire. Therefore, even if the biomass of olive trees recovers, the economic benefit is lost and remains constant for the entire period until the generation of new fruits. Similar considerations apply to the production of timber. Different is the case of carbon sequestration. Here the recovery of biomass generates an increase in the services until it reaches a threshold. This is the reason why we are using for this service a change in the lost benefits modelled by a sigmoid function. This is commonly used in the literature assessing the resilience of vegetation to wildfires. See the paper from Amani, B.H.K., N’Guessan, A.E., Van der Meersch, V., Derroire, G., Piponiot, C., Elogne A.G.M, Traore, K., N’dja, J.K., Herault, B. Lessons from a regional analysis of forest recovery trajectories in West Africa. Environ. Res. Lett. 17, 115005 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac9b4f. We have added this reference when addressing this methodological approach that is consistently used in the FirEUrisk project risk assessment. See Chuvieco et al 2023. Towards an Integrated Approach to Wildfire Risk Assessment: When, Where, What and How May the Landscapes Burn. Fire 2023, 6, 215, doi:10.3390/fire6050215.

Standard approaches to discounting, especially for short periods of time, are implemented by using a constant discount rate. We have already explained in the paper, providing references, that we have used a geometric discounting approach and not a hyperbolic approach (characterised by a declining discount factor) that makes sense when considering benefits and costs accruing over a very long period (at least 70-80 years). This is now better emphasised in the method.

- The discussion and limitations sections are superficial and require significant improvements to address simplifications, data gaps, model assumptions, and computational constraints.

The discussions have been reviewed and limitations to the approach proposed have been extended considering the idea suggested in the answers provided to the previous questions.  

- Line 787: The call for “increasing the capacity of national and regional governance” is vague and lacks specific, actionable recommendations.

This part has been improved reporting some management activities to contain wildfire and facilitate its suppression, building on some recent reference (796-805).

- Line 808: While the authors hope to “stimulate research,” they do give no framework or priority list for what kinds of empirical estimates or countries should be focused on next. Please work on this part.

We have amended this part making more specific comments on what is required by research in the countries where natural capital is characterised by limited resilience to advance research, produce empirical estimates of damage, and compare them with the results proposed in our study (815-828). 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It is recommended to consider incorporating the concept of cultural fire regime within the fire simulation section. This notion would enrich the modeling process by including not only biophysical variables but also human practices and decisions that have historically shaped fire patterns across different pyrobiocultural territories.

It is important for the article to emphasize that the socio-environmental, institutional, and ecological context of Europe is substantially different from that of other regions. In particular, European contexts tend to prioritize the protection of tangible values related to fire, such as infrastructure, productive resources, or economic assets. However, in many Global South countries, intangible assets such as cultural knowledge and cultural practices carry greater weight, even though they do not necessarily translate into economic terms.

Therefore, it is suggested that the authors explicitly acknowledge that the results and methodological approaches of the study should be carefully reviewed and adapted before being applied in contexts with fundamentally different cultural fire regimes, values, and regulatory frameworks.

Additionally, it is suggested that the literature section be reduced by approximately 30%, as it currently appears excessive.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

It is recommended to consider incorporating the concept of cultural fire regime within the fire simulation section. This notion would enrich the modeling process by including not only biophysical variables but also human practices and decisions that have historically shaped fire patterns across different pyrobiocultural territories.

Cultural fire regimes are certainly very useful, particularly to better understand human factors related to ignition and vulnerability. However, in the FirEUrisk project we followed a quantitative approach to simulate fire impacts, based on a standard fire propagation model. Additionally, since the project was focused on extreme events, we selected weather conditions of those days that had led to large fires. The decision on this simulation approach is not restricted to ecosystem services, but also to ecological vulnerability and exposure, which is not covered in this paper (further information can be obtained in Chuvieco et al. (2023).

It is important for the article to emphasize that the socio-environmental, institutional, and ecological context of Europe is substantially different from that of other regions. In particular, European contexts tend to prioritize the protection of tangible values related to fire, such as infrastructure, productive resources, or economic assets. However, in many Global South countries, intangible assets such as cultural knowledge and cultural practices carry greater weight, even though they do not necessarily translate into economic terms.

While we consider very interesting the comment of the reviewer, we have addressed in this paper several (though others are missing) aspects referring to the economic damage of wildfires. The intangible values proposed in the comment cannot be addressed with the methodology proposed in our study, because they are not commensurable in monetary metric, therefore they cannot be proposed in the study.  We are conscious that they must be addressed and considered in a broader context where the subject is the overall risk to wildfire and not only on the economic vulnerability of the natural capital at stake.

Therefore, it is suggested that the authors explicitly acknowledge that the results and methodological approaches of the study should be carefully reviewed and adapted before being applied in contexts with fundamentally different cultural fire regimes, values, and regulatory frameworks.

The approach used is purely economic and can be applied everywhere. We recognise that in some contexts economic values are not necessarily relevant because communities may prefer considering other values (ecological or cultural). Studies on the ecological vulnerability to wildfires are reported in the discussions (section 5.2). In addition, the breadth of meanings expressed by the vulnerability concept is reported in Section 2 (see the third paragraph for more details at line 107) where immaterial aspects able to limit fire vulnerability are mentioned. In addition, we have added a line and referenced the importance of fire management in the Global south at the end of the paragraph. 

 

Additionally, it is suggested that the literature section be reduced by approximately 30%, as it currently appears excessive.

Considering the number of reviewers (7) that have contributed to this paper’s revision, and the request of additional information to be supported by references, the reference list has been slightly extended. This now includes some references reported in the appendix that are essential to understand the original dataset used to assess the value of natural capital asset before fire. The paper is very rich, especially in the methodology, and we consider that the number of references provided is adequate to justify our proposal. To avoid significantly increasing the number of references, we used only key references where necessary, avoiding the use of multiple citations to justify the methods adopted in the economic assessment of damage. Finally, to defend the number of references used, we have to say that we needed to compare our results with findings from the literature (see discussion 5.1), because of the impossibility to validate the estimates proposed with alternative approaches. 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

While the topic is important and timely, the body does not provide a novel approach nor reliable results compared to the current knowledge of wildfire disaster management. The work largely relies on the application of existing tools, such as the FirEUrisk project for economic assessment and Rothermel’s fire behavior equation for fire simulation. Although wildfires often have long-term effects globally, there is no discussion on how these aspects are estimated in this study. It is also unclear how indirect costs are incorporated into the analyses.
Overall, the work in its current form does not present results that can pave the way for new directions in future studies.

Author Response

Reviewer 3

While the topic is important and timely, the body does not provide a novel approach nor reliable results compared to the current knowledge of wildfire disaster management. The work largely relies on the application of existing tools, such as the FirEUrisk project for economic assessment and Rothermel’s fire behavior equation for fire simulation. Although wildfires often have long-term effects globally, there is no discussion on how these aspects are estimated in this study. It is also unclear how indirect costs are incorporated into the analyses.

Overall, the work in its current form does not present results that can pave the way for new directions in future studies.

 

We thank the reviewer for the comment. The work proposed is part of the FirEUrisk project that has proposed innovative and multiple approaches to both fire risk assessment and management. Chuvieco et al. (2023) have detailed the overall approach to risk management which the analysis of the vulnerability is part of.  This paper thus provides additional details to the implementation of the risk assessment used in the FirEUrisk framework that could not be specified in Chiuvieco et al (2023). What is proposed in this study, is the detailed part of the risk assessment, as conceptualised in the Introduction and the Section 2, analysing the economic vulnerability to wildfires covering the European territory. This is not commonly proposed in the literature that usually focuses on detailed and localised assessment of fire damage.

To the best of our knowledge, there are no other papers working at this scale. There are (and we mentioned them in the discussions) local and national applications that build on more detailed datasets. While these studies can address punctual estimates and are suitable for detailed fire management and damage compensation locally, there is no idea of the damage to natural capital at a continental scale. We think that our approach may increase concern of where we need to intervene and what levels of resources are necessary for compensation although we are conscious that because of the lack of data, some important assets such as linear infrastructures (roads and cables) are not included. While other damages can be included, it was not the aim of this study to consider indirect cost, and this is explained in the limitations to the approach proposed. Also, we have not promised in the introduction to describe long term effects occurring globally but only to consider direct economic damage.

We do not fully agree with the reviewer when he suggests that the study as it is cannot pave the way for directions in future studies. We consider that the study has high replicability and can be addressed in smaller regions or at national scale using (where available) more detailed data to refine our results and propose specific policies for managing fire risk. We think that with our proposal we have provided the key elements necessary to show how an economic analysis can be done, and we hope that this research can stimulate a more detailed discussions on the locations where wildfires are becoming important, as shown by the several maps of damage proposed in the study. We have better expressed these concepts in the discussions and results.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

General Comments: This manuscript describes vulnerability concept adopted for the economic valuation of natural and manufactured capitals and the approach to measure wildfire damages (as a measure of coping capacity and recovery) at European scale. Although this manuscript is somewhat detailed and long, is well-written and structured. I have concluded that it does meet Fire publication criteria and can be accepted for publication after minor revisions.

Here are some minor points to note, others are explained in the text:

Abstract

• The method must be written clearly and scientifically.
• The main results of this research should be expressed quantitatively.

 

Materials and Methods

• The methods section seems to be very long and detailed. If possible, summarize unnecessary sections.

 

Conclusions

• The conclusions should mention the future applicability of the method.

 

Please check the guidelines of the Journal and format your manuscript accordingly

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer 4

General Comments: This manuscript describes the vulnerability concept adopted for the economic valuation of natural and manufactured capitals and the approach to measure wildfire damages (as a measure of coping capacity and recovery) at European scale. Although this manuscript is somewhat detailed and long, is well-written and structured. I have concluded that it does meet Fire publication criteria and can be accepted for publication after minor revisions.

We thank the reviewer for the positive comment

Here are some minor points to note, others are explained in the text:

 

Abstract

The method must be written clearly and scientifically.

The main results of this research should be expressed quantitatively.

We have reformulated the abstract following your recommendation as also suggested by another reviewer.

 

Materials and Methods

The methods section seems to be very long and detailed. If possible, summarize unnecessary sections.

Where possible we have reduced some words and streamlined/simplified the narrative through a general revision of the text (not only in the method), but the several components of the valuation framework necessitate a quite extensive methodological section to clearly explain the approach proposed.

Conclusions

The conclusions should mention the future applicability of the method.

Some ideas on the applicability of the methods, further research and policy implications are now provided in the conclusions.

 

 Please check the guidelines of the Journal and format your manuscript accordingly

Done. Minor changes to be more aligned to the requested format are made.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This research is very interesting, and I have several recommendations for your manuscript. This research used weather data related to extreme fires in your fire simulation. What weather data did you use in your fire simulation? What about the different climate characteristics of northern and southern Europe? Was that taken into consideration? Could you add data on the extent of each land use in Europe? Did you also consider the importance of each land use in your simulation? Did you also consider the landscape of each region in Europe? What about the calculation of property damage in your study? In the results section, you explain that Sweden is not characterized by the highest agricultural output, but has a very high average damage rate. Why is this? The projected fires appear to significantly affect central and northern European countries such as Germany, Poland, Estonia, and the Czech Republic, which show above-average projected damage. Why is this? Certain urban areas will undoubtedly experience greater property damage. Can you explain which urban regions experienced the most damage?

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer 5

This research is very interesting, and I have several recommendations for your manuscript. This research used weather data related to extreme fires in your fire simulation.

What weather data did you use in your fire simulation?

We used the weather conditions for those days (403 in total) when large fires occurred in Europe. The fire simulation was then run taking for each 1 km2 cell the upper percentage of those weather conditions for temperature and wind, and the lower percentage for relative humidity.

 

What about the different climate characteristics of northern and southern Europe? Was that taken into consideration?

Each cell has different weather values, based on weather observations for that particular cell, extracting those related to riskiest conditions.

 

 Could you add data on the extent of each land use in Europe?

The database used for evaluation of ecosystem services includes many layers, some of which are directly or indirectly related to land cover conditions. For instance the fire simulation requires a description of fuel model for each cell, which was retrieved from different land cover maps (Corine, ESA Worldcover, ESA Land cover CCI), extracting from each cover the most relevant parameters (See Aragoneses et al., 2023 to describe the process of generating the fuel type layer).

 

Did you also consider the importance of each land use in your simulation?

We have considered several land uses in our simulation, mainly agricultural, and forestry uses to describe the damage to provisioning services (timber, perennial crops, livestock) and ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and crop pollination. In addition, we have considered urban land use, with special attention to residential properties located in the Wildland Urban Interface, although linear infrastructures were not considered for the lack of data at the EU scale.

 

Did you also consider the landscape of each region in Europe?

Yes, since each cell has its own attributes. The analysis carried out considers biomes in European territory to assess the damage to natural capital, in particular to forest resources (timber) and related ecosystem services.

 

What about the calculation of property damage in your study?

Property damage is calculated starting from the national value reported in database like NUMBEO, multiplied by the local GDP per capita to national GDP per capita ratio to produce granular value of properties at the resolution of 1ha at the European scale (we are making the assumption here that places where GDP is higher are characterised by high property values), and finally corrected by the expected loss function of flame length and material of construction as detailed in the section 3.7. 

 

In the results section, you explain that Sweden is not characterized by the highest agricultural output but has a very high average damage rate. Why is this?

The projected fires appear to significantly affect central and northern European countries such as Germany, Poland, Estonia, and the Czech Republic, which show above-average projected damage. Why is this?

Explanations to the question proposed by the reviewer are dispersed in the manuscript in results and discussions. To be brief, to interpret our findings is necessary to make a distinction between the value of the asset and the damage which is a function of the resilience (coping capacity and recovery time) of the asset. While in many central-northern European countries some agricultural and forestry values are not so high, the resilience of natural capital assets is lower, thus causing damages to exceed values estimated in other geographic areas (southern Europe).

Certain urban areas will undoubtedly experience greater property damage. Can you explain which urban regions experienced the most damage?

We have reported at Figure 10 the expected damages to the Wildland Urban Interface. From the map it is relevant how the central part of England, the west part of Germany, the Tyrrhenian coastline of Italy and the central north part of Portugal can be highly affected by wildfire. Following from the previous comments, the biggest damages are reported where the combination of probability of fire is higher, and the coping capacity of the properties is lower.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 6 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Many congratulations on your work.

The paper proposes a methodological approach to deal with the concept of fire vulnerability suitable for making decisions at continental scale, by providing an ex-ante economic valuation of damage on a range of physical and natural threatened assets.

The subject is a very interesting and current subject and fits perfectly into the Fire Journal.

The work presented is very detailed and extensive, on a European scale, and was developed mainly within the scope of a big research project.

The paper describes in detail the applied methodologies and results obtained, but also the limitations of the study.

It is also worth highlighting the high number of bibliographic references presented throughout the text, which enriches the document.

The document is well organized and well written.

Remarks:

• In the title and throughout the text it is frequently mentioned: …economic vulnerability of wildfires…In my opinion, it is more correct: …economic vulnerability to wildfires…
• Lines 279-281: “With these parameters, the Rothermel’s fire behavior equation was used to simulate Rate of Spread (m/s), Reaction intensity (kW/m2), Fireline Intensity (kW/m) and Flame 280 Length (m)”.

I think it would be important to mention here why this simulation model applies even in extreme conditions.

• Lines 493-494: “…, expressed in 2021 euros per square meter.”.

Per square meter? Units are already in the figure.

Author Response

Reviewer 6

Dear Authors,

Many congratulations on your work.

The paper proposes a methodological approach to deal with the concept of fire vulnerability suitable for making decisions at continental scale, by providing an ex-ante economic valuation of damage on a range of physical and natural threatened assets.

The subject is a very interesting and current subject and fits perfectly into the Fire Journal.

The work presented is very detailed and extensive, on a European scale, and was developed mainly within the scope of a big research project.

The paper describes in detail the applied methodologies and results obtained, but also the limitations of the study.

It is also worth highlighting the high number of bibliographic references presented throughout the text, which enriches the document.

The document is well organized and well written.

We say thanks to the reviewer for the positive comments received. 

 

Remarks:

In the title and throughout the text it is frequently mentioned: …economic vulnerability of wildfires…In my opinion, it is more correct: …economic vulnerability to wildfires…

We have made the suggested change

Lines 279-281: “With these parameters, the Rothermel’s fire behavior equation was used to simulate Rate of Spread (m/s), Reaction intensity (kW/m2), Fireline Intensity (kW/m) and Flame 280 Length (m)”.

I think it would be important to mention here why this simulation model applies even in extreme conditions.

The paper does not discuss the suitability of different fire behaviour models but takes a well-known model which was used by other groups of the FirEUrisk project, including some with ample experience in fire propagation assessment (ADAI from University of Coimbra), which recommended the use of this model. In any case, we did not try to estimate the fire propagation of specific fires, but rather the propagation potential, and more specifically the spatial differences in propagation. This is now stated at section 3.5. The use of the Behave and Flammap models are quite appropriate for this purpose, and they have been previously used in global simulation of fire effects (for instance: Lasslop, G., Thonicke, K., & Kloster, S. (2014). SPITFIRE within the MPI Earth system model: Model development and evaluation. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 6, 740-755).

 

Lines 493-494: “…, expressed in 2021 euros per square meter.”.

Per square meter? Units are already in the figure.

Amended. The correct unit of measures is Euros/ha/year.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 7 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript concerns a methodological approach to address economic vulnerability of wildfires in Europe. It is relatively comprehensive, though this is justified given the broad range of issues it covers, covering almost all of Europe. Overall, it is carefully prepared and of a high standard.

Some of the European map illustrations in the paper are a bit blurry, with the colored dots too small to easily read. But that might be the case, as you can always zoom in. However, there are some shortcomings that could be improved, as listed below.

Comments 1:
The type of paper was specified as an article, the words "Type of the Paper ()" haven't been removed. It should be corrected.

Comments 2:
The abstract should focus more on the research methodology, rather than limiting itself to a summary of the content.

Comments 3:
In accordance with the publisher's guidelines, the structure of the paper should include an Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions (optional) sections. The manuscript should be brought to this layout - the idea is that the second chapter should be Materials and Methods, third chapter should be Results, the fourth - Discussion (not "Discussions"), and the fifth - Conclusions.

Comments 4:
The section "Limits of the Approach" (now as 5.3.) should be earlier, i.e. in Materials and Methods section.

Comments 5:
The designations of the chemical elements nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) could be, if they are only mentioned in the text in line 394, given by their full names.

Comments 6:
The word "they" in line 799 is used ambiguously, it is not known who it refers to,

Comments 7:
References given in Table A1 (at least these: Badiu et al., ..., Dimitrova and Dimitrov, ...) should be included in the References section.

Comments 8:
The text makes excessive use of first-person plural narration ("we ...").

Comments 9:
The manuscript contains too many self-citations by some of its authors.

Comments 10:
The phrase "..concrete-brick" in line 330 is misleading. It is better phrased further down, e.g., as follows: "combined brick-concrete structures", "Concrete/bricks made", or "made of concrete & bricks".

Comments 11:
There are some typos in the manuscript, which should be corrected. For example:
1) references to authors' names should be in superscript; similarly, the references in the caption of Table 2,
2) "or and" in line 63,
3) there are no dots in the numbering of some sections,
4) "FiEurisk" in line 90, and "FireEUrisk" in line 818,
5) NUTS1 and NUTS2 (in many places) - it should be NUTS 1 and NUTS 2,
6) "accruing" in line 726,
7) "EUROSTAST" in Table A1.

Author Response

Reviewer 7

The manuscript concerns a methodological approach to address economic vulnerability of wildfires in Europe. It is relatively comprehensive, though this is justified given the broad range of issues it covers, covering almost all of Europe. Overall, it is carefully prepared and of a high standard.

We say thanks to the reviewer for the positive comments received. 

 

Some of the European map illustrations in the paper are a bit blurry, with the coloured dots too small to easily read. But that might be the case, as you can always zoom in. However, there are some shortcomings that could be improved, as listed below.

We have provided clear maps at high resolution as a separate file. The editorial office can propose in the final version bigger pictures than those shown in this version of the manuscript. 

 

Comments 1:

The type of paper was specified as an article, the words "Type of the Paper ()" haven't been removed. It should be corrected.

The change requested was made

Comments 2:

The abstract should focus more on the research methodology, rather than limiting itself to a summary of the content.

We have amended the abstract emphasising the methods used as suggested by another reviewer.

Comments 3:

In accordance with the publisher's guidelines, the structure of the paper should include an Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions (optional) sections. The manuscript should be brought to this layout - the idea is that the second chapter should be Materials and Methods, third chapter should be Results, the fourth - Discussion (not "Discussions"), and the fifth - Conclusions.

The paper is structured as suggested by the reviewer. It also contains a necessary section that fits well between the introduction and the methodological approach necessary to justify the concept of vulnerability, how it is interpreted and used in the FirEUrisk project and in this paper. We consider that this is essential to understand what vulnerability is and how this can be measured in economic terms. While Section 2 could be included in the methods, considering that the methodological section is very extensive we prefer keeping it outside. The separation also helps emphasise the importance of the conceptual approach that is detailed in the paper written by Chuvieco et al (2023).

Comments 4:

The section "Limits of the Approach" (now as 5.3.) should be earlier, i.e. in Materials and Methods section.

We do not agree with the reviewer. The "Limitations" section in a research paper is typically located within the Discussion section, either at the beginning or end, to provide context for the findings and acknowledge the shortcomings of the study. It may also be addressed in the Conclusion section, particularly if it also includes recommendations for future research. We prefer retaining the limits of the approach where they are. 

Comments 5:

The designations of the chemical elements nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) could be, if they are only mentioned in the text in line 394, given by their full names.

Amended as requested

Comments 6:

The word "they" in line 799 is used ambiguously, it is not known who it refers to,

“They” has been replaced with “results”.

Comments 7:

References given in Table A1 (at least these: Badiu et al., ..., Dimitrova and Dimitrov, ...) should be included in the References section.

Added to the reference list

Comments 8:

The text makes excessive use of first-person plural narration ("we ...").

We have removed the first-person plural where possible.

Comments 9:

 

There are only three papers from Chuvieco and 8 from Molina (as first author). While this can be at a first sight seen as a self-citation approach, we found that there are not studies addressing the analysis of wildfire vulnerability at continental scale (excluding the work of Chuvieco) and there are not many examples of damage to natural assets caused by wildfires in Europe excluding the works proposed by Molina. In particular, Molina’s references were used in the discussions to compare our results with damage measured in other areas. 

 

Comments 10:

The phrase "..concrete-brick" in line 330 is misleading. It is better phrased further down, e.g., as follows: "combined brick-concrete structures", "Concrete/bricks made", or "made of concrete & bricks".

Amended as suggested

Comments 11:

There are some typos in the manuscript, which should be corrected. For example:

1) references to authors' names should be in superscript; similarly, the references in the caption of Table 2,

2) "or and" in line 63,

3) there are no dots in the numbering of some sections,

4) "FiEurisk" in line 90, and "FireEUrisk" in line 818,

5) NUTS1 and NUTS2 (in many places) - it should be NUTS 1 and NUTS 2,

6) "accruing" in line 726,

7) "EUROSTAST" in Table A1.

All changes suggested were made

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for the revisions. As Far as I am concerned, the manuscript can be accepted for publication. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors' responses are convincing and I can now recommend it for publication.

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article is fascinating and comprehensive; the author has also made some improvements. The research area is vast, and there may be difficulties encountered by the author in determining the value of the damages that occur. Can you explain what the researchers do when the necessary data is unavailable? What recommendations can the author provide regarding the minimum data that must be present in a region to analyze damage values due to fires more accurately and efficiently?

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 7 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Most of my comments from Round 1 were appropriately addressed. A few points were not corrected but were clarified by the authors, and therefore can be considered justified. The manuscript can be further processed for final publication in the journal.