Χωρική ανάλυση του κινδύνου και των αναμενόμενων απωλειών των οικοτόπων από δασικές πυρκαγιές στο νησί της Κεφαλονιάς

Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία επικεντρώνεται στην χωρική ανάλυση του κινδύνου και των αναμενόμενων απωλειών των οικοτόπων από δασικές πυρκαγιές στο νησί της Κεφαλλονιάς. Σε πρώτη φάση πραγματοποιείται εκτεταμένη δειγματοληψία πεδίου, με μετρήσεις των παραμέτρων της καύσιμης ύλης, με στόχο την αντιστοίχιση των διαφόρων τύπων βλάστησης σε τύπους καύσιμης ύλης. Έπειτα για να αναχθούν οι σημειακές μετρήσεις στο επίπεδο του τοπίου (όλο το νησί) χρησιμοποιείται μία δορυφορική εικόνα η οποία δίνει τη βλάστηση στο επίπεδο του νησιού και την αντιστοίχιση της βλάστησης με καύσιμη ύλη αλλά και την εδαφοκάλυψη. Στην συνέχεια προσδιορίζονται οι μετεωρολογικές συνθήκες και οι συνθήκες υγρασίας της καύσιμης ύλης για τα οποία, μέσω του μοντέλου προσομοίωσης πυρκαγιών FlamMap, εκτιμώνται χωρικά η συμπεριφορά του πυρός αλλά και ο κίνδυνος έκθεσης της βλάστησης στην πυρκαγιά. Στο τελευταίο στάδιο της ανάλυσης, εκτιμάται η μεταβολή της αξίας των οικοτόπων της Κεφαλλονιάς από δασικές πυρκαγιές, μέσω του λογισμικού ArcFuel.This thesis focuses on the spatial analysis of the risk and the expected loss of habitats from forest fires on the island of Cephalonia. Initially, we conducted an extensive field sampling, measuring the parameters of forest fuels in order to match the different types of vegetation with types of forest fuels. Afterwards, in order to assign the spot measurements on the land level (on the whole island), a satellite image is used to give us the vegetation on the land level of the island and the matching of vegetation with forest fuels and land cover. Thereafter, the weather and humidity conditions of forest fuels are determined for which, through fire simulation model FlamMap, the behavior of fire and the exposure of vegetation to fire are spatially estimated. In the last part of the analysis, we estimate the change in the value of Cephalonia's habitats using the ArcFuel software

Regionalization of a Remote Sensing based Spatial Decision Support System for Bush Fire Management in Benin

Wildland fire agencies officers need objective and systematic information to make effective decision on fire management. Getting such information is usually challenging especially in developing countries where the required infrastructures or skills are not always available. Recent developments in the assessment of bush fires using remote sensing techniques and the availability of such results enable a systematic study of fire distribution and regime on different spatial scales. In this dissertation, we propose a development of a spatial decision support system for Bush fire monitoring called FIMAT (FIre MAnagement Tool), as well as a case study using the tool developed for Benin. The purpose of this study was (1) to grasp the theories of fire ecology and (2) state-of-art methods on vegetation fire assessment, (3) to develop a Spatial Decision Support System for Fire Management and (4), to regionalize its use to Benin for spatial and temporal fire distribution description. FIMAT is developed in Java using libraries such as Geotools, Jhdf. The fundamental data used by this system are MODIS burned area level 3 product along with auxiliary layers of geographic information. The MODIS burned areas product is derived from processing of combined MODIS-TERRA and MODIS-AQUA 500m land surface reflectance data using the Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) in a model-based change detection approach. This algorithm approximates the dates of burning by locating the occurrence of rapid changes in daily MODIS reflectance time series. FIMAT encompasses many processing and report functionalities. A data management system can automatically downloads the required fire data from MODIS Dataserver, if they are not available locally. A fire statistics calculator can generate the necessary information at small spatial scales (e.g municipality) from the original HDF data tile and save the result as Geotiff raster or other file formats. A map editor displays the processing results as a map along with additional layers. The created map can be customized by using the interactive integrated style editor and graphic editor and a chart editor shows generated statistics. Documents can be added to the project in Pdf format and viewed with the integrated Pdf viewer. The textual and graphical information generated by this monitoring tool can help decision makers to monitor and assess bush fire in simple way without them being necessarily specialists in Programming or Geographic Information Systems. It is an application with a simple user graphical interface. It is useful as a tool for operational assessment of compliance to the laws and arrangements. FIMAT has the following advantages over available tools (e.g Web Fire Mapper) - FIMAT can operate off-line; - it permits mapping of additional data layers; - it includes graphical editor and other useful reporting systems; - the maps and charts generated are highly customizable; - it offers more analysis and output options; - it allows assessment at subnational level (e.g communal level). From the investigations on spatial and temporal distribution of vegetation fire in Benin, it results that fire is a recurrent phenomenon in this region. It distribution in time and space follows approximately the same pattern over the studied period 2000-2009. Fires start usually in October and last until April/Mai with a maximum in December. Most of the burnings occur once at every location but some areas can burn two or three times a year. Those multiple burned areas are generally in protected areas where the fuel load is important and the vegetation more continuous. The multiple burned areas are usually extensions of late burned areas on early burned areas in their neighbourhood

Wildland Fire Data: Issues and Proposed Solutions

Wildfires occur all over the world. Many countries collect data on such fires. In an effort prevent and study wild fires, the sharing of this information is imperative. Information can best be shared through a wildland fire database. In order to create a wildland fire database in the United States, data integrity issues must be dealt with first. Data integrity issues became apparent during a wildland fire data warehousing project conducted at Texas A&M University for the National Association of State Foresters (NASF) from 2003-2009. Two main issues emerged from this project. One was the lack of consistency in fire cause and the other was the location information provided was not accurate at the county level. In an effort to propose a solution to the lack of consistency in wildland fire cause, raw data from the NASF project was analyzed as to how to modify the nine statistical causes currently used by the United States Forest Service (USFS) to provide a more useful representation of the current state of wildland fires. In addition, it was hypothesized that location information in the United States Public Land Survey format was on average more accurate than other submitted location data (e.g. latitude/longitude). It was found that the cause information could benefit by sub-dividing the current USFS especially for the causes of debris burning and miscellaneous in order to help determine the actually cause of a wildland fire. Using a χ^2 statistical test it was conclusively determined that USPLS information was the most accurate location information submitted during the NASF project. As a result of these two analyses, a new proof of concept data submittal system was also developed. The development of this system was based on the system that was utilized during the NASF project. However the new system incorporated autonomous data integrity checking at the front end of data entry instead of after the data had been submitted. The new submittal system was costly in terms of data processing time due to the lack of consistency in the data being submitted. The overall issue in wildland fire data is that there is a lack of consistent reporting methodologies and the data that is being submitted