Assessing cross-boundary wildfire hazard, transmission, and exposure to communities in the Italy-France Maritime cooperation area

Abstract

The growing threats posed by wildfires in Southern Europe are calling for the development of comprehensive and sound management and risk assessment strategies. In this work, we present the application of wildfire simulation modeling based on the minimum travel time (MTT) algorithm to assess fine-scale (100-m resolution) wildfire hazard, transmission, and exposure to communities in the Italy-France Maritime cooperation area (Sardinia, Corsica, Tuscany, Liguria and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur), which cover about 72,000 km2 of land. We simulated thousands of wildfires considering the current landscape and characterized and measured fine-scale wildfire risk factors and profiles by taking into account historical fire regimes, fuels, winds and fuel moisture conditions associated with the occurrence of the largest wildfires (>100 ha) that affected the study area in the last 20 years. Individual fires were simulated at 100-m resolution, consistent with the input files. Modeled annual burn probability and ignition probability revealed that Sardinia was the Region most affected by wildfires. The wildfire simulation outputs were then combined with main land uses and building footprint locations to characterize wildfire transmission and exposure to communities, and were summarized for main vegetation types and Regions. This study presents a cross-boundary and standardized approach based on wildfire spread modeling to analyze and quantify wildfire risk profiles in Southern Europe. The stochastic wildfire modeling systems we implemented used harmonized sets of data for a vast, fire-prone Mediterranean area, where previous similar studies were conducted at coarser resolutions and covered lower extent of lands. The approach presented in this work can be used as a reference pillar for the development and implementation of a common wildfire risk monitoring, management, and governance plan in the study area. The methods and findings of this study can be replicated in neighboring Mediterranean and other regions threatened by wildfires.