EFFIS Project

ARCADIA SIT is a partner in the European consortium for the provision of services in the field of GIS and remote sensing under the DESIS framework contract, the project is developed by JRC - IES - Institute for Environment and Sustainability / LMNH Land and Natural Hazard Management Unit.

The European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) supports all EU services, whose main task is to protect forests from fires, with fire mapping obtained from the interpretation of satellite images, and provides reliable and up-to-date information on fires to all EU institutions, including the European Parliament. The geographical area covered is not only EU Europe, but extends to the Mediterranean countries (North Africa, Middle East, Turkey).

The main activities are:

• Software development to automate tasks using ArcGis, IDL, ERDAS, Python
• Automatic processing of MODIS/SENTINEL land/water satellite images (unsupervised supervised classifications, vegetation indices, gravity indices, principal component analysis, change detection analysis)
• Satellite photo-interpretation in MODIS/SENTINEL land/water video and auxiliary data
• Automatic processing and spatial analysis of vector and raster data (database of burnt areas and their evolution, administrative data, Natura 2000 database, database correlated to thermal anomalies detected by MODIS/SENTINEL earth/water satellite, indices, derived from meteorological data, and to fire risk forecasting)
• Continuous website updates dedicated to the production of daily, weekly reports on burnt area statistics, damage estimates and potential risk areas.

The following must therefore be determined:

• The date of the fire
• The dimension of fire
• The position of fire
• That the date indication in the file corresponds to the year indicated in the file
• That the time of the start of the fire is before the time of intervention and extinction of the danger
• The duration of the fire, which must be reasonable on the basis of its size
• That the name of the fire site was reported correctly
• That there is consistency between the name code and the NUTS code
• That the correct/updated code is used
• The possibility of finding missing data by cross-referencing existing data
• The accuracy of the position co-ordinate references, (North/East)
• The correct assignment of the hazard location category (forest/non-forest etc.)
• The cause of the fire
• The consistency and accuracy of the mapping, case code, country and its EU code

It is then verified that all required fields are populated with values consistent with the domain of the relevant tables and that there is consistency between the geographical information and the description provided.

A database of statistics and historical data of burnt areas was prepared and included in the bulletin:

• Number of forest fires in five southern Member States (1980-2011)
• Burnt area (hectares) in five southern Member States (1980 - 2011)
• Number of forest fires in other European countries (1990-2011)
• Burnt area (hectares) in other European countries (1990 - 2011)

The European Fire Database is an important component of EFFIS and contains information on forest fires compiled by the EU Member States and other member countries of the EFFIS network.

Forest fire data provided annually by individual EU countries and additional data from other European countries were checked, stored and managed by the JRC within EFFIS.

The database is now known as the 'European Fire Database', is managed with ArcGIS Desktop and contains four types of information such as the time, location, size and cause of the fire.

On the one hand, biodiversity depends on the integrity, health and vitality of forest areas, on the other hand, a decrease in forest biodiversity would lead to losses in forest productivity and sustainability, therefore, forest management is geared towards improving biodiversity levels through the provision of forest goods and services, including:

• Wood and non-wood products: e.g. biomass-based energy
• Climate control
• Pollution control
• Soil protection and soil formation: e.g. erosion control
• Nutrient cycle
• Biodiversity protection
• Water regulation and supply
• Recreation
• Disturbance regulation

CLIENT: JRC (ISPRA) EU