Objective
To define suitable forest fire presuppression planning
and suppression strategies in order to optimize resource
utilization and minimize fire effects.
Wildland fires are responsible for most damages and environmental
impair of forest ecosystems in the Mediterranean region of the
European Community. As a consequence, the current fire
management policy is to fight fires aggressively in all cases.
A modern fire management approach concerns ways to convert
wildfires from deliberate to controllable, their behaviour from
unknown to predictable and their effects from disastrous to
affordable or even acceptable.
In order to control wildfire effects and reduce losses through
management techniques, fire managers must implement preventive
treatments at the planning stage and employ appropriate control
strategies during the fire. The evaluation of the effectiveness
of different management measures, under different geographic
conditions, requires a thorough understanding of the
environmental (weather conditions, topographic relations,
vegetation coverage) and human (preventive and suppressive)
factors as well as their interactions. To accomplish such
management tasks we have to know the cause of fire effects and
the relevant management issues, too. International knowledge
acquisition in the above issues will be realised from top expert
research organisations in frame of the PROMETHEUS project.
Forest fire characteristics (fire intensity, residence time,
energy release...) can be the link between presuppression
measures, suppression techniques and post fire management.
PROMETHEUS aims to define the rules that dominate the influence
of interrelated fire management issues. Prevention of
catastrophic effects and regulation of presuppression and
suppression measures according to the level of acceptance of
wildfire impact shall be the research baseline of the project.
For the implementation of PROMETHEUS experimental plots will be
established in Greece and Italy for monitoring wildfire impact to
the soil , vegetation and forest ecology. Impact of fire to the
soil will be studied by setting experimental fires in Italy and
collecting data from past wildfires in Greece. Field and
laboratory work will be combined for the comprehension of post
fire natural regeneration and definition of the parameters
affecting the resilience of Mediterranean pine forests.
Knowledge accumulated during the project will be collected and
formalised using induction methods. The project aims to
implement a Knowledge Based System (KBS) for supporting fire
management decisions according to expected effects of the fire,
using GIS interface and expert systems technology.
Fields of science
Not validated
Not validated
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
17672 ATHENS
Greece