Application of the Daily Fire Danger index to Algerian Large Fire Events

The Daily Fire Danger Index aims at providing a daily map of the areas where fire ignition and propagation is more likely. The paper shows the behavior of this index during a major fire event that affected Algeria in the summer of 2022. The increasing incidence of wildfires and megafires, both in terms of burnt area surface and in terms of power released by the fires, makes the strategic importance of prevention strategies and tools greater than ever. To this end, satellite observations offer a privileged platform to cover large spatial scales with a high time frequency. This paper aims at demonstrating the utility of a scalable-resolution fire danger index, named Daily Fire Danger Index, based on Sentinel-2 L2A and Sentinel-3 Synergy products for developing an operational system for wildfire prevention in Algeria. This index exploits both weather and satellite data to estimate all the main fire weather variables and is calibrated using the historical records of wildfire occurrence in the area of interest.