Overview

Status

Ongoing

Start
1 February 2023

End
31 January 2025

Type: Cross-border prevention and preparedness and marine pollution (Track 2)

EU contribution amount: EUR 602 128.58 (EU Contribution )

Funding source: UCPM-2022-PP

Contact email: ECHO-CP-KNOWLEDGE-NETWORK@ec.europa.eu

Description

The project aims to advance towards a harmonised understanding of the wildfire problem in touristic areas, providing knowledge on the impact of fire on buildings, installations, cultural heritage, infrastructures and the involved population and human behaviour as well as on the performance of fire risk mitigation measures used across EU. New insights will be integrated into a set of tools and guidelines for the appropriate and EU harmonised fire prevention and protection planning in trans-boundary areas in Europe, which will be demonstrated in selected cross-border (Spain-France) pilots. Thanks to a co-participatory process of key stakeholders from other EU trans-boundary areas, outcomes will be fully applicable at EU level. The project should contribute to improve the cross-border cooperation in prevention and preparedness to the risk of forest fires affecting touristic areas, which can be further enhanced by the use of the resulting guidelines for prevention and protection planning.

A multi-disciplinary highly qualified consortium has been assembled including partners from the scientific community, private and public sector on civil protection and local authorities with largely recognized expertise on wildfire management research and implementation projects.

UPC (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, COO) is a public institution dedicated to higher education and research with engineering background and large experience on technological, environmental and natural risk reduction research projects (https://certec.upc.edu) (Project coordinator Elsa Pastor)

EFR (Efectis France, BEN) is a reference fire testing laboratory counting on outstanding division on R&I with technical competences on fire safety engineering and fire hazard/vulnerability modelling. (P.I. Bruno Guillaume)

ULUND (Lunds Universitet, BEN) is one of Scandinavia's largest research universities and its Fire Safety Engineering Division is an internationally acknowledged point of reference on modelling and virtual reality applications for human behaviour analysis in fire field (P.I. Enrico Ronchi).

DDGI (Diputació de Girona, BEN) is the Provincial Council of Girona authority who gives support to 221 municipalities on provisions’ compliance regarding WUI fire prevention measures. DDGI also leads communication, education and fire risk awareness campaigns across Girona province (P.I. Maria Pipió).

EPLFM (Entente pour la fôret Méditerranéenne, BEN) – Valabre is a public organisation working in the field of Civil Protection with several areas of activity: firefighters training, development and normalization of new technologies and solutions for civil protection and information and awareness raising campaigns on natural hazards for the population (P.I. Philippe Meresse).