FLIRE DSS: A web tool for the management of floods and wildfires in urban and periurban areas

Abstract

A web-based Decision Support System, named FLIRE DSS, for combined forest fire control and planning as well as flood risk management, has been developed and is presented in this paper. State of the art tools and models have been used in order to enable Civil Protection agencies and local stakeholders to take advantage of the web based DSS without the need of local installation of complex software and their maintenance. Civil protection agencies can predict the behavior of a fire event using real time data and in such a way plan its efficient elimination. Also, during dry periods, agencies can implement "what-if " scenarios for areas that are prone to fire and thus have available plans for forest fire management in case such scenarios occur. Flood services include flood maps and flood-related warnings and become available to relevant authorities for visualization and further analysis on a daily basis. When flood warnings are issued, relevant authorities may proceed to efficient evacuation planning for the areas that are likely to flood and thus save human lives. Real-time weather data from ground stations provide the necessary inputs for the calculation of the fire model in real-time, and a high resolution weather forecast grid supports flood modeling as well as the development of "what-if " scenarios for the fire modeling. All these can be accessed by various computer sources including PC, laptop, Smartphone and tablet either by normal network connection or by using 3G and 4G cellular network. The latter is important for the accessibility of the FLIRE DSS during firefighting or rescue operations during flood events. All these methods and tools provide the end users with the necessary information to design an operational plan for the elimination of the fire events and the efficient management of the flood events in almost real time. Concluding, the FLIRE DSS can be easily transferred to other areas with similar characteristics due to its robust architecture and its flexibility.

Special Issue: Applications and Research Trends in Remote Sensing and Geoinformation - Third International Conference on Remote Sensing and Geoinformation of Environment - RSCy2015

“…In their paper, Kochilakis et al [6] present FLIRE DSS, a web-based decision support system for forest fire control and planning and flood risk management for real-time use in natural disaster management. The system can be used by government agencies to predict fire and flooding events using real-time data, in order to stop fires from spreading and to draft evacuation plans.…”

Evaluation of Fire Evacuation Performance of Building Atriums based on Decision Support System

“…In addition to the above two approaches, some scholars have established different DSS based on other methods, but their research purposes are also to solve or simulate similar risk issues such as evacuation in specific fire scenarios. Kochilkis et al established a web-based DSS that primarily implements fire control and planning for forests and risk management of floods [10]. Pribyl et al established a new practical road tunnel risk analysis system that reduces the cost of the tunnel safety system [11].…”

Decision Support System Development of Wildland Fire: A Systematic Mapping

“…BA[77,86,90,149,172,[180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189] Big Data[29,45,145,181,[190][191][192][193][194][195] Figure6. Number of studies found versus the problem to be solved.…”