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SIMULATING LARGE-SCALE WILDFIRES AND COMMUNITY EXPOSURE: A FRAMEWORK AND APPLICATION IN MACEDONIA, GREECE
Abstract
In this work, we provide a framework for assessing cross-boundary wildfire exposure and a case study application in the region of Macedonia, Greece. The required spatial layers describing topography, fuels/ vegetation and ignition location were retrieved from open-access international and national databases, while climate data were obtained from remote automatic weather stations. We processed the spatial layers to derive the required inputs for the Minimum Travel Time fire spread algorithm. Hourly and daily weather data were used to derive the most frequent wind directions and to characterize the extreme wind speed scenarios for the season with the lowest dead and live fuel moisture contents (July and August). The study region was divided into 30 zones of similar climatic conditions and historical wildfire activity (i.e., simulation scenarios that included simulation duration, wind data, fuel moisture content and spotting probability). For model calibration, we replicated the historical large wildfire size (>50 ha) distribution of each zone by simulating thousands of potential wildfires with the derived simulation scenarios. Ignitions were allocated within burnable fuels according to an ignition probability grid developed from a historical fire occurrence database. We simulated over 300,000 fires, each independently modelled with constant weather conditions considering a randomly chosen simulation scenario. Scenario selection was based on a predefined selection probability derived by the historical wind direction frequency and fire duration of the ignition location zone. Simulations generated a layer of fire perimeters and raster estimates of annual burn probabilities and conditional flame length. Results were used to estimate community exposure by intersecting simulated fire perimeters with community polygons. The number of exposed structures was assigned to each simulated fire ignition, estimating its influence on each community (one ignition to many communities). The post-processing of these ignitions generated community firesheds, which delineate the area around communities where large fires are likely to be transmitted to the burnable and populated community area polygons. We found that on 9,250 km2, or the 27% of the study area, potential ignitions can grow large enough to reach communities and cause structure exposure. The proposed framework can guide future efforts aimed at quantifying community exposure to large-scale wildfires and guide investments to prioritize fuel management activities to reduce fire risk.
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