ESR11 Project

The last decade was marked by severe wildfire seasons globally and in Europe (e.g. Australia 2019-20, Portugal 2017) with concerning implications for the economic, ecological, and social system. While in the past fire regimes occurred according to changes in the climate system and vegetation patterns, anthropogenic warming, increased droughts, and altered precipitation and wind patterns are predicted to amplify fire activity and the frequency of extremely large fire events (henceforth ‘megafires’). Ongoing socio-economic changes such as land abandonment and expanding settlements into the wildland-urban interface (WUI) further increase wildfire risk and vulnerability.

To encounter the multidisciplinary causes and consequences of wildfires, calls for integrated wildfire management have been put forward. An important factor herein lies within governance. Formal and informal policies regarding wildfire prevention, preparedness, response and restoration influenced how human-wildfire interactions developed in the past, and form an opportunity to shape the occurrence of wildfires in future. Policies are relevant for a variety of sectors, reaching from urban planning in the WUI (e.g. building guidelines, planning of evacuation routes), landscape design (e.g. application of fuel and fire breaks), forestry management (e.g. legal frameworks for prescribed burns, forest structure), nature conservation (e.g. management of fire-adapted ecosystems), agroeconomy (e.g. burning of fields and harvest remains), and firefighting (e.g. suppression policies, safety, fire fighting techniques)

In this project, I will research how policy frameworks and governance concepts can improve fire resilience. To this end, I will review existing frameworks on local, national and European level, and throughout different regions (Mediterranean and Central/Northern Europe). I will define state-of-the-art, best-practice and shortcomings by interviewing relevant stakeholders. As a result I expect to come up with a strategy for fire resilient governance and policy recommendations for integrated fire management in Europe. This will imply lessons learned from a multi-hazard risk governance analysis, such as policies in flooding, seismic risks, forest disturbance, avalanches and storms.

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