PREFER: SPACE-BASED INFORMATION SUPPORT FOR PREVENTION AND RECOVERY OF FOREST FIRES

The PREFER FP7 project aims at responding to major fire prevention needs in Southern Europe. All reports on the state of Europe’s forests indicate that the broad Mediterranean area is systematically affected by uncontrolled forest fires with large impact on ecosystems, soil erosion, slope instability, desertification trends, and local economies as a whole, with a negative mid-to-long-term prospect because of Climate Change. In this scenario, the need to improve the information and the intelligence support to forest fire prevention is widely recognized to be relevant. Fire prevention is still the most cost-effective strategy when compared to fire fighting and extinguishing that are costly, local, and triggered only in response to already ongoing crises. The PREFER project intends to contribute to responding to such a pragmatic need of Southern Europe’s forests by: 1) providing timely multi-scale and multi-payload information products based on exploitation of all available spaceborne sensors within the project time frame (the next 3 years); 2) offering a portfolio of EO products focused both on Pre-crisis and Post-crisis forest fire emergency cycle in the EU Mediterranean area; 3) preparing the exploitation of new spaceborne sensors available by 2020 (e.g.: Sentinels) and 4) contributing to the definition of User requirements for the new EO missions. The project capitalizes on the experience gained in the last decade by the Partners, in the frame of European and national applied research programs focusing on the management of forest fire hazards with spaceborne observation means. It will set up a regional service, able to process and distribute the information to end users, developed and maintained by a regional cluster of core users, industries and research institutes. Through the exploitation of the synoptic character of spaceborne EO data, the regional service is intended to stimulate further the coordination between countries on forest fires prevention in the EU Mediterranean region. The paper is devoted to illustrate the project products and the first results of the R&D activity.