Structural fire risk: The case of Portugal.

This study is focused in mapping the structural fire risk in the vegetated area of Portugal using a deterministic approach based on the concept of fire risk currently accepted by the scientific community which consists in the combination of the fire hazard and the potential economic damage. The fire susceptibility map of Verde and Zêzere (2010) was adopted and updated by the use of a higher resolution digital terrain model, longer burnt area perimeter dataset (1975-2013) and the entire set of Corine land cover inventories. The susceptibility was mapped with five classes to be in accordance with the Portuguese law and the results confirms the good performance of this model not only in the favourability scores but also in the predictive values. Three different scenarios of (maximum, mean, and minimum annual) burnt area were consider to estimate the fire hazard which allow to estimate the likelihood of a pixel to burn (ranging between 0% and 20%) depending on the class to which it belongs and on the future burnt area scenario. The potential economic damage was estimated with the vulnerability scores and monetary values of species defined in the literature and by law. The obtained fire risk map identifies the areas more prone to be affected by fires in the future and provides an estimate of the economic damage of the fire which will be a valuable tool for forest and fire managers and to minimize the economic and environmental consequences of vegetation fires in Portugal.

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