PREVAIL

Overview

Description

Prevention Action Increases Large Fire Response Preparedness (PREVAIL) was a cooperative project between five research organisations from fire-prone European countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece). It aimed to demonstrate how wildfire prevention can make large fire suppression more effective and less costly.

The project provided empirical knowledge, practical tools, and analytical techniques to improve Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) effectiveness in the fire disaster management cycle.

The combination of extreme climate events and fuel accumulation results in increasingly large wildfires that often overwhelm the fire management of single countries. Between 2007 and 2018, the UCPM was activated to respond to an extreme fire event 84 times.

PREVAIL involved analysing prevention, preparedness and suppression measures to counteract large fires, as well as simulating past large fire events to reconstruct fire behaviour and predict the effects of alternative fuel-management scenarios on reducing the need for fire suppression efforts.

The project aimed to determine the best strategies to integrate prevention and preparedness for large fire events, sharing and spreading ‘smart’ solutions that were implemented locally in partner countries via transnational training and production of materials to raise awareness among citizens, land managers, and fire operators.

It also developed a decision support system to plan and optimise smart solutions for the water catchment-scale, to increase the leverage and cost-effectiveness of fuel management treatments and promote development of local economy.

Project content

Partner organisations