OFIDIA | Operational Fire Danger Prevention Platform

Project Description

The effective protection from forest wildfires is a costly challenge for the eligible area because the frequency of wildfires increases as a result of higher weather temperatures. Moreover, wildfires cause wide damage with detrimental consequences to life sustainability in the short and long run.Our main objective is to build a cross-border operational fire danger prevention infrastructure that advances the ability of regional stakeholders across the eligible area of the program to detect and fight forest wildfires through more effective patrolling, environmental monitoring, weather modeling, fire danger forecasting and automated access to related historical data.More specific goals of the project are to:

Improve the operational capability of forecasting, preventing and fighting forest wildfires in the cross-board area
Enhance the cross-border cooperation concerning fire danger protection
Encourage cross-border knowledge sharing among research institutions and stakeholders
Advance the sustainable life quality and economic prosperity in the area

To achieve our goals we built an effective consortium including 2 research institutions, the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) and the University of Ioannina (UI), along with three stakeholders: the Decentralized Administration of Epirus-Western Macedonia, Forest Directorate (DAFD), the Province of Lecce (LE) and the Province of Bari (BA). The Ioannina Regional unit Fire Corps (IRFC) is also actively participating as an operational collaborator of the regional Forest Directorate for the direct exploitation of the developed infrastructure. Moreover, based on regional agreements, the partner LE will involve the Province of Brindisi, to include the Province of Brindisi area as well, among the areas covered by the OFIDIA project. The partners have complementary roles because CMCC provides experience in data management/analysis, viz tools and fire danger forecasting, UI contributes expertise in weather forecasting and data storage management while DAFD (with IRFC), LE and BA provide expertise in forest protection, fire fighting and environmental monitoring in the Epirus and Apulia regions.

Activity

The project activity includes:

The installation and operation of hardware equipment for automated weather monitoring and visual forest patrolling
The installation and operation of control rooms for the operational coordination of forest fire prevention and fighting
The joint development of integrated operational IT infrastructure for data storage, weather modeling, fire danger forecasting, visualization of historical and forecasted data on geographical maps
Knowledge sharing of scientific and operational best practices through cross-border planned visits between the research institutions and the stakeholders