Daily fire hazard index for the prevention and management of wildfires in the region of Sardinia

The purpose of this paper is to show how the process for the calculation of the Daily Fire Hazard Index described in (Laneve, Cadau, 2007) [1] was improved upon by taking into account the effects of wind speed and direction, examining the wildfire insurgence data in the Italian region of Sardinia. The Daily Fire Hazard Index was developed in the context of the S2IGI project with the objective to provide a daily estimate of the likelihood of wildfire insurgence, in order to help coordinate the firefighting activities. Using land cover maps, fuel maps and MODIS satellite imagery, an algorithm was developed to estimate the relative amount of live and dead vegetation. Meteorological data is used to determine the temperature, the relative humidity and the wind speed. After using the FAO Penman-Monteith method (1998) [2] for the determination of the reference evapotranspiration of the vegetation, a simple algorithm was used to correct the surface temperature accounting for the effect of the magnitude of the wind speed. After determining the wind direction using the meteorological forecast data, the correction factor takes into account the fact that in Sardinia, the majority of the wildfires occur in days of strong Mistral winds.