Fire Ignition Risk Evaluation, Spreading, Transport, Operational Response and Modelling.

forthcoming

Wildfires are increasing around the globe in frequency, severity and duration, increasing the need to understand their primary effects on ecosystems and human health. Furthermore, wildfires trigger or enhance a range of secondary hazards (e.g. floods, ash and phosphorus dispersion); also, wildfire's byproducts can be transported over long distances, with harmful effects on soil chemistry, air and water quality. The aim of FIRESTORM is the development of the first comprehensive system that integrates fire ignition from both natural and anthropic sources, fire spread and atmospheric dispersion (including fire byproducts and pollutants) at local, regional and global scale to assess primary and secondary hazards, enabling proactive measures for fire prevention (e.g. firebreaks). In addition, FIRESTORM’s features possible outlooks include the characterization of a range of anthropogenic or natural ignition scenarios (e.g. fires caused by lightning strikes, lava flows, volcanic pyroclastic material fallouts and earthquakes), auto-detection of new fires using satellite remote sensing, integration with other hazard models and maps, both natural (e.g. volcanic, seismic and weather-related maps) and anthropic (e.g. pollutant fallouts). This will be delivered through 5 Work Packages (WPs): the first three focus on the development and coupling of fire-air models; the fourth and the fifth are dedicated to the implementation and deployment of the system and its validation, respectively. FIRESTORM will therefore make a step forward in the state of the art, being the first multi-scale system capable of modelling and coupling fire and atmospheric flows, in order to provide short and long term hazard scenarios, which play a crucial role in civil defense, both for emergency management and for risk mitigation.