FIRE-SCENE starts to enhance wildfire risk management and governance
Wildfires
The project FIRE-SCENE – ‘Advancing wildfire Civil Protection scenarios into risk planning and governance’ kicked off on the 12 and 13 February 2025. FIRE-SCENE aims to develop novel procedures and tools to enhance the capacity to protect citizens from new wildfire risk scenarios promoted by the changing climate conditions. Funded by the European Union, under the Knowledge for Action in Prevention and Preparedness (KAPP) call of the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM), the project is led by the Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC) and will last for two years.
The frequency of extreme wildfires in the Mediterranean basin is increasing due to climate change and changes in land uses such as loss of croplands and forestry activities. These events are having a growing and more severe impact on the sustainability of economies and ecosystems and the Civil Protection capacity to guarantee citizen safety. This is particularly challenging in the case of areas populated either by residents or tourists just passing by. These challenges will be addressed across four pilots in Spain, Greece and Italy with Wildland-Urban Interfaces (WUIs), tourist villages, resorts, recreational sites and natural parks.
FIRE-SCENE will develop six risk assessment and planning tools together with end-users, seeking to reinforce Civil Protection systems to, firstly, deal with wildfire risk in WUIs and the impact of wildfire in tourist areas and resorts and, secondly, manage wildfire risk in protected areas and recreational sites considering the presence of visitors. In parallel, the project will promote the dialogue with stakeholders and collaboratively generate a roadmap at the local/regional level to enhance risk governance. Finally, FIRE-SCENE will organise exchange meetings and transfer the project results to other EU territories suffering such a growing wildfire risk.
We pre-identified the need for the operational tools during the proposal preparation. With them, we aimed to fill practical gaps among local/regional stakeholders and end-users. Moreover, the recommendations we will develop to advance risk governance models attempt to make risk management more efficient, sustainable in terms of funding, and collaborative.
The project consortium is composed of six organisations from Spain, Greece and Italy representing different sectors such as research, Civil Protection and local authorities and non-profit wildfire management and prevention organisations: CTFC, the General Directorate of Civil Protection of the Government of Catalonia, the CIMA Research Foundation, the Pau Costa Foundation, the University of Thessaloniki and Calabria Region.
The consortium includes high-level institutions in terms of expertise and responsibilities on the matter. Research and transfer (R+T) institutions are combined with the direct participation of Civil Protection authorities at regional and local levels. Our proposal counts on the support of local stakeholders in all the pilots. The Mediterranean scope of the consortium is amplified to the EU context, due to the high-level R+T activities of some consortium members at EU and international levels, offering a global perspective of the challenges addressed within the project in terms of wildfire risk management.
The initial stage will be very active since FIRE-SCENE must carry out all preparatory territory-based tasks for the proper implementation of the pilots. At the same time, partners will compile lessons learned and best practices and share them at the first international in-person exchange meeting. This meeting will take place this spring in Catalonia, and participants include partners and external guest experts and stakeholders. For more information on the project, keep checking FIRE-SCENE's website for updates.