Landscape planning and natural resources preservation: use of multicriterial geographical models for environmental and socio-economic forest fires risk assessment.

摘要

Forest fires represent one of the most important cause of environmental damage. In the Mediterranean region, the high frequency of the wildland fires and their large surfaces represent a problem due to the loss of vegetation and to the risks for the human activities. In Italy, the most recent tool to face this phenomenon is the law number 353/2000, in which the regional annual plan of forecast, prevention and active fight is innovative. In this framework, a model that is able to evaluate at the same time the probable occurrence of a catastrophic event and the possible effects that it can cause in terms of ecological, environmental and socioeconomics impacts has been proposed. The use of multi-criteria analysis techniques and Geographical Information Systems (McA-Gis) gives the chance to integrate the landscape features with the preferences expressed by the actors involved in the decisional process. The maps of "Predisposing" and "Derived" fire risk are the most important results of the MCA-GIS model. The first map integrates all the morphological, climatic and human characteristics that induce the ignition and the propagation of the fire; the second one integrates all the ecological characteristics and the human activities that make dangerous the calamitous phenomenon. By using the obtained outcome it was possible to study the predisposing and the derived risk in the urban-forest interface areas. The results showed that the predisposing risk increases from the agricultural areas to the natural areas and those of urban-forest interface. An opposite tendency was showed by the derived risk that is linked to the presence of protected areas and to the distance from the infrastructures required for the interventions (supply water, fire means); as a consequence, the derived risk was lower in the urban-forest interface areas. The overlay of the risk and the protected areas maps underlines that protected areas mostly suffer such phenomenon due to the lack of an strategic planning of economic development and natural resources protection.