An operational tool for fire management and fire prevention planning for public administration (Tuscany Region - Italy)

To better organize the forest fire fighting activities of prevention and suppression the Tuscany Region Administration has decided to use a complex model for the evaluation of the risk of the territory. This model has been named Final Risk Index (FRI). It is the final result of the combination of different intermediate indeces, the principal ones of whom are: the Global Risk Index (GRI) and the l'Operational Difficulty Index in Firefighting (ODIF). In the beginning these two indices were developed separately by the IBIMET - CNR and DISTAF of the University of Florence, after they were integrated to generate an efficient tool for the planning and management of all the forest fire activities, in fact the model is now able to provide information to different scale of time and territory. In terms of time it can give information from the daily risk or to the seasonal risk while in area terms it can visualize pixel from 10x10m to 400x400m, these data can be aggregated to laid out a map of risk for single pixel , for the whole territory of a municipality or for homogeneous areas, ecc. The GRI gives an indication of the risk of a territory developing a "Static hazard and a Dynamic hazard". The first one is the evaluation of the vegetation, the morphology, the aspect and road network., while the second one is the elaboration of the meteorological data. These values are then integrated with the evaluation of the social component, that is given by the historical statistic analysis of the ignition points. The mathematical elaboration of these data gives an estimation of the probability of ignition of a forest fire in an area. Anyway this index doesn't allow to estimate the suppression difficulties of the fire ODIF gives these information. The index analysed several factors affecting the extinction activities of the fire squads and the aerial means. The road network, the water points distribution, the types of engines and squads are the elements that are evaluated by the model. The final result is an estimation of the efficiency and effectiveness of the fire fighting organization in a determined area. Anyway FRI is able to provide other information useful for a complete planning of the forest fire fighting activity. FRI is still in a testing phase, because not all the component has been enough validated. GRI has been tested for to a regional level only for the "static hazard and not for the Dynamic hazard, while ODIF has been validated to the municipality level and is now on the provincial level. The final development is due for the end of 2008.