The OFIDIA Fire Danger Rating System

Prevention is one of the most important stages in wildfire and other natural hazard management. Fire Danger Rating Systems (FDRSs) have been adopted by many countries to enhance wildfire prevention and suppression planning. With the aim to provide real-time fire danger forecasts and finer-scale fire behaviour analysis, an operational fire danger prevention platform has been developed within the OFIDIA project (Operational FIre Danger preventIon plAtform). The OFIDIA Fire Danger Rating System platform consists of (1) a data archive for managing weather forecasting and wireless sensors data, (2) a data analytics platform for post-processing weather data and for computing fire danger indices, and (3) a web application system for the visualization of weather and fire index maps and related timeseries. The OFIDIA platform is also connected to a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) that gathers data from several sites in the Apulia (Italy) and Epirus (Greece) regions. The WSN is made by a primary station and several wireless sensors dislocated in wooded areas, the data acquisition process relates to variables like air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation, solar radiation, and fuel moisture.