UNDERSTANDING WILDFIRES AND RISK IN ALBANIA: ANALYSIS OF FIVE YEARS’ OBSERVATIONAL EXPERIENCE ON THE RISK AND ITS SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION

Abstract

Wildfire Risk Forecast (WRF) remains a regular procedure conducted by the National Centre for Forecast and Monitoring of Natural Hazards (NCFMNH), which is part of the Institute of GeoSciences of Albania (IGEO). WRF is generated daily by the country’s administrative unit (prefecture) and disseminated to the National Civil Protection Agency (NCPA) in order to help the fire-fighting activities better coordinate in case of Fires caused or promoted by natural factors. The main purpose of this scientific work was to conduct a survey on forecast alerts and fire events during summer seasons in a period of 5 years (2017-2021). Analyses on Forecast Alert (FA), Prefecture Hit Probability (PHP) and Average Fires per Hit (AFH) were conducted on Risk-Level-bases in order to have a complete view of the topic of the study. Besides, the study put the findings on a Hazard Index Map (HIM) where Fire Risk on Prefecture basis was revealed. The calculations were made using the results of FA, PHP and AFH components in the High-Risk Level (FA_High, PHP_High, AFH_High) comprising wildfire Hazard Exposure Index (HI) for the first component and wildfire Vulnerability Index (VI) for the second and third component (VI-SA and VI-SB). The methodological approach was inspired by the one used to evaluate the risk in WorldRiskReport (WRR), but due to several restrictions in this study, components for the evaluation of risk were used. The final Hazard Index Map reveals the highest risk localised in Fier Prefecture, followed by Elbasan, Vlore and Diber Prefectures.