Analysis of fire risk for a Greek municipality

Forest fires pose a significant risk in Mediterranean ecosystems. Decision-makers and land managers need tools to spatially analyze fire risk in terms of ignition probability and propagation. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in combination with statistical and knowledge-based decision-making methods like Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) offer a suitable framework for fire risk analysis. The specific topographic, meteorological, anthropogenic and natural criteria for the Almyros Municipality, Greece were evaluated, adapted, analysed and synthesized, to determine its fire risk. The analysis resulted in a spatial representation of fire risk classification for the Almyros region, in the form of a fire risk classification map. The fire risk classification divides the region in 6, about equal area, classes, namely ”very low”, ”low”, ”moderate”, ”high”, ”very high” and ”extremely high” fire risk. It constitutes a comparative assessment of each pixel within the study area’s boundaries. This fire risk analysis could help local authorities and policy-makers as well as land managers to better understand the topology of fire risk in Almyros. Though, more comparative research is needed to further validate the findings of this thesis. Additionally, an adaptive approach is needed if the proposed methodology is to be applied for the analysis of fire risk for other regions. This is due to the fact that it heavily relies in the intrinsic characteristics of the study area and the innate subjectivity of MCDA, in terms of weighting fire risk drivers and causative factors. To the author’s best knowledge such a fire risk analysis for the Municipality of Almyros is conducted for the first time.