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Urban areas adjacent to wildlands are very dangerous zones for residents and their properties during a wildfire event. We attempted to connect wildfire simulations with field inventories and surveys to create a framework that can be used to enhance the fire resistance of residential structures located in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Legal restrictions and the lack of economic incentives for WUI residents greatly limit the potential to appropriately intervene to enhance their property’s fire resistance. By studying in situ the resilience of building materials and combining them with exposure metrics produced from wildfire simulations, we created an index that helps to assess fire risk at the property level. The proposed index can support property owners to optimally manage the vegetation near or inside their property. State agencies can use our proposed index to estimate with a consistent methodology which properties are more exposed and with higher risk from fire damage so that specific fuel and vegetation management practices on and around them can be suggested or enforced.

A crucial risk governance priority of the Greek forest managers is to reduce damages in the wildland–urban interface (WUI) by controlling wildfire behavior through fuel management practices. To support decisions for where management should be applied and how, this study experimented with new methods for fuel treatments allocation over a typical Mediterranean fire-prone landscape in the peninsula of Kassandra (an area of 350 km2), northern Greece. The Minimum Travel Time (MTT) fire simulation algorithm and the Treatment Optimization Model were used to produce eight spatial exclusionary and non-exclusionary datasets that were used as criteria for the spatial optimization of fuel management interventions. We used the Multicriteria Decisions Analysis method with Geographical Information Systems to cartographically intersect the criteria to produce two priority maps for two forest management scenarios (i.e., a control and a realistic one). The results revealed that 48 km2 of the study area was characterized as high-priority locations in the control scenario (i.e., with equally weighted management priorities), while 60 km2 was assigned to the high-priority class in the realistic scenario (i.e., with different weighted management priorities). Further analysis showed a substantial variation in treatment priority among the four major forest land cover types (broadleaves, sparse Mediterranean shrublands, conifers, and dense Mediterranean shrublands), revealing that the latter two had the highest selection values. Our methodological framework has already been operationally used by the Greek Forest Service branch of Kassandra to decide the most effective landscape fuel treatment allocation.

Adapting to the growing frequency of catastrophic wildfires in Greece and mitigating their effects is a complex socio-ecological problem. We used an online survey to query more than 100 engaged stakeholders who can potentially influence possible legislation and fire management organizational reform, emphasizing civil protection agencies and research entities. We focused the questionnaire on the importance of different wildfire effects to understand which were considered negative or unacceptable, indifferent, or positive. For fire prevention, we examined the range of acceptance and views on fuel management and fire use activities that are limited in extent or not allowed in Greece. We also examined the beliefs regarding ignition causes and responsibility, in addition to how different policies might reduce wildfire-related problems. The results revealed an emphasis on reforming wildfire management policies to deal with the way society and agencies function and interact, and mitigate the influence of climate change in wildfire frequency and behavior. In addition, respondents had a negative stance towards allowing wildfires to burn for resource objectives and a strong belief that arsonists are behind most ignitions. They also believe the lack of a national cadaster system is a major source of wildfire-related problems. The results indicate little support for fuel treatments, but increased acceptance for the legalization of fire use during firefighting (backfires). This study summarizes current wildfire perceptions in Greece and identifies opportunities and barriers to changes in wildfire governance to improve risk management programs and guide post-fire management and mitigation.

Large-scale wildfires have become more frequent in Greece and coupled with the country’s limited economic resources, investments in both pre-fire planning and post-fire rehabilitation for most affected areas are not feasible. From the perspective of forest and fire management agencies, the severity and importance of fire effects are evaluated based only on total area burned, while from a societal standpoint, by the number of fatalities and destroyed houses. A holistic approach to rank wildfires with an inclusive assessment of all their effects is missing. We developed a new evaluation and ranking index based on expert judgment, the study of 50 large-scale fire events in Greece and a detailed review of the literature, to develop a set of categories and criteria to assess ecological and socioeconomic effects of wildfires. The Fire Inventory and Ranking of Effects (FIRE) Index provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use semi-numeric framework that combines scores from seven fire effects categories and 56 criteria through a user-friendly web-platform. The seven categories include fire effects on landscape and vegetation, general environmental impacts, regeneration potential and vegetation recovery, casualties and fatalities, destruction and damages to infrastructure, economic losses, and firefighting and wildfire suppression. Each of the 56 criteria within these categories describes a different anticipated fire effect. The magnitude of each fire effect criterion is estimated by predefined ranked choices by one or more persons/assessors in a multi-level evaluation procedure. We apply the FIRE Index assessment to a significant 5900-ha wildfire that occurred in 2011 in northern Greece, including a sensitivity analysis of how different category weights impact the final index score. More diverse metrics to assess wildfire effects will help address the complex social and biophysical dimensions of the wildfire governance challenge and help guide pre- and post-fire management actions.