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pyrostat — a computer program for forest fire data inventory and analysis in Mediterranean countries
Environmental Modelling & Software 16 (2001) 351–359 www.elsevier.com/locate/envsoft
Product Review
pyrostat — a computer program for forest fire data inventory and analysis in Mediterranean countries A.P. Dimitrakopoulos
*
Department of Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 228, 540 06 Thessaloniki, Greece Received 29 June 2000; received in revised form 3 September 2000; accepted 3 November 2000
Abstract pyrostat, a computer program for forest fire data inventory and analysis, is presented and analyzed. Detailed description of the system analysis considerations, program structure, and user–interface principles is given. pyrostat is specifically designed to alleviate current problems and anticipate future needs of the forest fire data recording processes in all the countries of the Mediterranean Basin. The program electronically files forest fire information and produces reports with cumulative quantitative data on forest fires (number of fires, area burned, fire causes, type of vegetation burned, fire suppression parameters, etc.), at various temporal (single day, month, year or multi-year) and spatial (local, regional, national) scales. It also provides the user with the option to isolate, group and retrieve recorded fires that share in common a combination of factors. pyrostat may serve as a common tool for forest fire management planning and exchange of homogeneous information on forest fire data, among Mediterranean countries. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Forest fires; Fire management; Computer applications; System analysis; Mediterranean Basin
1. Introduction The need for a common forest fire information system was justified during the Strasbourg Conference on the “Protection of Forests in Europe” (January 1990), where the European Union (EU) and 27 other countries agreed to Resolution No. 3, calling for a feasibility study on a centralized forest fire data base, in order to facilitate and promote the exchange of fire information among various countries and to improve fire prevention strategies. Specifically, Resolution No. 3 stated: “A common forest fire data bank will facilitate and encourage the exchange of homogeneous information on forest fires, which could improve fire prevention and promote discussion of the forest fire problem among different countries, without substituting with a standard universal system all the different national systems…” (European Union, 1993). Consequently, the European Union with Regulation No. 804/94, directed all its member countries that have a serious forest fire problem (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece), to provide annually a “minimum common * Tel.: +30-31-992-774; fax: +30-31-472-003.
core of information on forest fires”: number of fires and total area burned (forested and non-forested) per geographical region, detection time, initial attack time, extinction time, and fire cause. Implemented at the EU level, the minimum core of information on forest fires is destined to serve as a starting point for the creation of a pan-European central forest fire data base (European Union, 1996). FAO organized a series of workshops on the “Treatment of Forest Fire Data Bases” for the North African and Middle Eastern countries. The objective of the workshops was the formulation of a computerized, common forest fire data base among the countries of this region (Food and Agriculture Organization/ICAMAS, 1998). However, forest fire data collection and analysis processes differ significantly among the various countries of the Mediterranean Basin: 1. In Spain, since 1968 the fire data inventory and primary processing is conducted at the forest district level, using dbase iv. Fire statistics reports are generated by every district. The forest fire information accumulated in every forest district is transferred, on a monthly basis, via magnetic carriers to the General
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Forest Service Headquarters (ICONA) at Madrid, where it is converted by a C++ program to the central database format, operating in UNIX environment (Merida, 1994). Because of the decentralization of the information processing, the Spanish system has increased flexibility and ability of adaptation to different regional conditions. In France since 1973, a forest fire data base named “Operation Promethee” operates in the 15 Mediterranean districts of Southern France. Forest fire data from reports provided by the forest service, the police and the fire departments, are recorded and stored in the database. In 1992, “Operation Promethee” was connected to the national computer network MINITEL, and thus became accessible to the general public (Guiran, 1992). Temporal and spatial fire information for the different districts is available in tabular and graphical form. In Italy, the regional forest districts document forest fires in special fire report forms. Only the central administration in Rome uses computer software for fire data processing, written in prolog. In Portugal, at regional level, the forest fire statistics are entered on special “forest fire documentation forms”. Only the central administration at Lisbon uses a database (dbase iv) for electronically storing forest fire information, which is gradually being converted into a new relational database, designed and implemented with the tools of Microsoft access 2.0. The Forestry Service of Cyprus uses a DOS-based application in dbase iii plus (forfires) for forest fire data storage and primary processing, and a commercial statistical package (spss) for the statistical analysis. Morocco, Tunisia, Greece and Turkey manually record forest fire information on special “fire report forms”. No further computer processing of the data is conducted, except in Greece and Turkey, were they are stored in computer files with a fortran program.
In the processes of collecting, storing and analyzing forest fire information in Mediterranean countries, four major related problems emerged: 1. There is no compatibility among the type of forest fire data recorded in every country, although the fire regimes and the fire suppression objectives are very similar. 2. Very few countries use special software for forest fire data processing. Most countries use either simple, commercial and, usually, not very effective programs, or simply do not have any program. 3. The persons in charge of forest fire data processing are usually experts in fire management, but have little knowledge of computer systems and, usually, have no knowledge of computer programming.
4. The central administration and regional forest directorates in the same country, often use different means and methodology for recording and analyzing forest fire data. To alleviate these problems, a new computer program for fire data processing in the countries of the Mediterranean Basin, should fulfill the following requirements: 1. Provide compatible forest fire data for all the countries and, at the same time, reflect the individual fire situation of every country. 2. Fill a gap between complex and simple forest fire data processing software, with a program of moderate complexity, without adversely affecting the quality of the output information. 3. Employ a ‘user-friendly’ computer interface that does not require special knowledge of computer systems and programming, with emphasis on avoiding operator errors. 4. Provide the option of applying the same forest fire data inventory program at different administrative levels (forest station, forest district, forest directorate, general forest service administration), thus providing additional flexibility. In this study, a computer program for forest fire data inventory and analysis, called pyrostat, is presented. pyrostat is specifically designed for common use among the various countries of the Mediterranean Basin (both European and non-European), by fulfilling these requirements and also by taking into account the particular forest fire data collection process of every country.
2. System analysis considerations of pyrostat The information needs for any forest fire database are numerous and vary in nature, from extensive data on the fire regime and fire behavior, to information about the technological and human firefighting resources. The problem of collecting and processing the right information about forest fires is very complex and affected by a large number of different factors: vegetation; weather; topography; fire suppression capabilities; socio-economic conditions (European Union, 1996). These factors are inter-related and each one consists of several internal parameters. The main difficulty is the collection of the necessary data in such a way that it will be easy to collect and record and, at the same time, adequately describe the fire conditions and fire control events (Food and Agriculture Organization/ICAMAS, 1998). The system designer must decide which data items to record and the way to record them (in a printed form and/or electronically). When all the activities are analyzed, a decision must be reached concerning which of them
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should be recorded manually on paper forms and which should be processed via a computer program. In the Mediterranean countries of Europe, all fire data are initially recorded manually on paper forms (white boxes, Fig. 1), while the further processing of the data may be computerized (gray boxes, Fig. 1). For every wildland fire, the standard procedure in all European Countries is to complete a fire report form. These are the main carriers of fire-related information, and basically serve two purposes: (1) answer multiple questions concerning the fire conditions and the effectiveness of human intervention in extinguishing the fire; and (2) reveal long-term trends, when records are consistently kept over long periods of time. The usefulness of such forms is directly related to the type, amount and precision of the fire information they contain. This question, seemingly simple, can present a major difficulty since the fire report forms must be easy to fill-in under field conditions and, at the same time, as complete as possible. A balance between these contradictory requirements is usually very difficult to obtain (Dimitrakopoulos, 1999). Another conceptual problem is the different definition ascribed to the same fire parameter in different countries, such as: “definition of forest land”, “which and how many categories of forest fire causes should be recorded”, “threshold value of minimum area burned for a fire to be recorded”, or “methodology of monetary assessment of fire damages” (European Union, 1996). In view of the above, for the creation of pyrostat, the forest fire documentation forms from nine Mediterranean countries were exhaustively studied: Portugal; Spain; France; Italy; Greece; Turkey; Cyprus; Tunisia; Morocco. The common forest fire input data worksheet (screen) that was derived for pyrostat, is a compendium of all the different forest fire data recorded in every
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country, thematically grouped in categories, after rigorously checking the particular definition of every recorded parameter in every country.
3. pyrostat program structure pyrostat is structured according to modular programming principles, so it is easy to change or update particular modules without affecting other modules or the data structure (Dale and Weems, 1987). The program is split into modules performing different uniform tasks, such as: maintenance of disk functions, user’s interface, data display, data processing and printing. All the modules were tested separately and are automatically assembled into a program during compilation. Program data is stored and processed in coded form and is searched and retrieved with Sequential and Binary Search algorithms (Baase, 1987) and sorted with Shell and Quick Sort algorithms (Press et al., 1989). pyrostat is written in turbo pascal 5.5 and consists of: (1) integrated development environment (IDE) with screen program editor, compiler and debugger; and (2) standard pascal libraries and routines (Jamsa and Namerroff, 1988; Garland, 1984). It requires a standard computer configuration (i486 or higher, VGA monitor and printer) and has direct linkage to the SAS statistical package, for statistical analysis of the fire data. The pyrostat computer program performs three main functions: 1. Inventories and creates a computer file for every fire event that is recorded on each country’s “forest fire documentation form”. The fire data are entered into the computer via a specifically designed input screen worksheet.
Fig. 1. Main components of the forest fire data collection and retrieval process in the Mediterranean countries of Europe.
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2. Generates forest fire reports which present, in tabular and graphical form, the following fire information: number of fires; total area burned; and average area burned per fire. This information is provided separately for every fire input parameter, either for every forest administrative unit (e.g. forest directorate) or as a total for different geographical areas and the whole country. pyrostat fire data can be presented for a single day, week, month, year, or in a time-series of up to ten consecutive years. 3. Selects and retrieves forest fires which burned under various meteorological, topographic, vegetative, pyric and administrative ‘specific conditions’, that are set by the user. pyrostat searches through the recorded forest fires and selects only the ones that fulfill the given conditions. Two main modules control the fire information inventory and processing in pyrostat: (1) manipulate fire records; and (2) generate fire report. 3.1. The ‘manipulate fire records’ module This module consists of three submodules (data storing and retrieving, data maintenance, data transfer) structured in eight control or maintenance functions (Fig. 2a): create/edit, view/browse, delete, undelete, rename, write, merge, and print records. The module’s main function is to create, file and modify forest fire records. The pyrostat forest fire data entry worksheet (Fig. 3) of the ‘create/edit’ function, receives from the screen in an interactive mode and, subsequently, stores into the computer memory, the following input parameters that are entered by the user from the various ‘forest fire documentation forms’: 앫 Fire location: forest directorate, forest station, forest, locality, geographic coordinates. 앫 Date and time (hour and minute) of fire detection, fire report, initial attack, aerial attack (if any), fire control, fire extinction. 앫 Fire cause: four major categories are distinguished: arson, negligence, unknown, natural. The specific fire causes that are also included are: lightning; range improvement; agricultural activities; hunters/tourists; forest operations; military operations; garbage burning; electric power lines; mentally disturbed/children. 앫 Meteorological conditions: wind speed; wind direction; air temperature; relative humidity; days since last rainfall before the fire. 앫 Topographic conditions: aspect; slope; elevation; parent rock; soil type; litter layer. 앫 Area burned (ha) by vegetation species and type: there is a choice of 20 dominant vegetation species. The vegetation types are: tall forest; coppice forest; shrublands; grasslands; agricultural fields. They are
앫 앫 앫 앫 앫 앫 앫
distinguished in ‘dense’ (⬎50% cover) and ‘sparse’ (⬍50% cover). Ownership status of the forest area burned: public; private; municipal; other. Type of fire: surface; crown; mixed. Suppression forces involved (human resources): forest service employees, professional firefighters, civil guard, civilians, army/police, other. Suppression forces involved (equipment): number and type of engines; dozers; aircrafts; helicopters; other. Suppression methods: ground attack; aerial attack; mixed. Fire break-out point. Costs and losses: loss of human lives; loss of animals; value of timber lost; suppression cost. Forest commodities of non-market values are not recorded.
3.2. The ‘generate fire report’ module This is the output module of pyrostat, with a main function of presenting forest fire records previously stored by the program. This module consists of three submodules (Fig. 2b): (1) time-series report; (2) specific conditions report; and (3) print chart report. 3.2.1. ‘Time-series’ submodule This submodule generates reports in tabular form regarding the number of fires, the area burned and the average area burned per fire, separately for every major input parameter of the pyrostat. These outputs can be cumulatively presented for any combination of: 앫 One or more forest districts, geographical and/or administrative regions. 앫 One or more years (up to ten). 앫 Different area units (hectares, decars, acres). The outputs can be directed to different types of output devices: 앫 Screen (the tables are presented in graphical mode). 앫 Printer. 앫 Different types of data files accepted by major statistical programs. Simple data output, SAS and EXCEL file formats, are supported by the program. 앫 Chart format to be printed by the ‘print chart’ submodule of the program.
3.2.2. The ‘specific conditions’ submodule The ‘specific conditions’ submodule answers to queries formulated by the user, regarding specific conditions of forest fire events. This submodule provides the user with the option to isolate, group and retrieve specific fires that share in common a combination of factors. The
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Fig. 2.
‘Manipulate records’ and ‘generate report’ modules of pyrostat.
Fig. 3.
pyrostat fire data entry worksheet.
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program user obtains a query window where all available factors can be combined with Boolean operations (AND/OR) and linked with comparative relations (more, less than or equal to). Forest fire records can be selectively shown, according to any combination of factors, for example, “forest fires that occurred in elevations less than 800 m, with relative humidity more than 50%, air temperature more than 35°C, etc.” (Fig. 4). Thus, outputs are according to requests formulated by the user, regarding the specific conditions that must be common to all selected fire records. After formulating a query, the expected fire information can be directed to: (1) a screen, displaying the full fire forms; or (2) a printer, showing only the most important items from the fire forms. In either case a summary is displayed, showing the number of the fires, the area burned and the percentage of the total burned area that this area represents, for the specified period and under the specified conditions. 3.2.3. The ‘print chart’ submodule In this submodule the user is able to print chart files saved previously from the ‘time series’ submodule, on a laser printer supporting the HP/GL 2 printer/plotter language. An option exists to view the graph on screen before the printing. An example of pyrostat’s output tables is given in Fig. 5. While having the results displayed in tabular form on the screen, the user can visually assess the data in the form of a pie or bar chart. These tables and charts facilitate the analysis of forest fire phenomenon from various viewpoints, while the relative importance of each separate factor can be estimated both temporally and spatially.
4. Pyrostat user’s interface In pyrostat, ‘menu’ and ‘fill-in forms’ options have been adopted (Jamsa and Namerroff, 1988). Thus, a linear tree-structured menu guides the user towards the
Fig. 4.
pyrostat ‘specific conditions’ submodule example.
Fig. 5. pyrostat output example: (a) distribution of number of fires according to fire causes for the whole country (Greece) for the decade 1986–1995; and (b) distribution of average area burned per fire for the Sterea (Greece) Forest Directorate for the year 1995, according to elevation and month of the year.
desired fire information. Two types of menus are used: ‘choice-driven’ and ‘information asking’. Every menu is surrounded by a frame, limiting the operational space. At the top center of the frame, a title indicates the function of the menu, while at the bottom of the frame, the last line (‘status line’) provides brief information on the available choices or the state of the current procedure in action. In the ‘choice-driven’ menus, the user is informed about his relative position in the menu structure by a number, at the top right corner of the menu frame. The maximum number of items in a menu (the breadth of the menu) is kept between 4 and 8, and the levels of menus (the depth of a selection) in the range of 2–3, as suggested by Schneiderman (1989). The choice of an item can be made by ‘highlighting’ the desired item using the arrow keys and then select it with the ‘ENTER’ key, or directly, by pressing the first letter of the item, which is unique for the menu (and has different color). In the case of the ‘fill-in forms’, pressing the
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‘ENTER’ key leads the user through the logical order of input. If an entry is made to the program through the screen, a blue square indicates the maximum possible length of the entry. If an error is detected, an error box with the appropriate message appears at the bottom of the screen. At the end of the input sequence, an appropriate message box informs the user of the completion of the form and suggests necessary steps for further processing. All the keyboard entries are syntactically controlled for correctness, depending on their position in the program. The place for the user’s input is indicated by the default blinking cursor. Only the appropriate set of options is accepted, otherwise a sound signal is produced indicating incorrect key selection. Three different types of entries are available, dependent on the input information: 1. String or character sequence of any sort (not controlled syntactically). 2. Integer value, whose range is predetermined and itemdependent (controlled syntactically). 3. Integer value-item from the database nomenclature. Following general conventions, the ‘ESCAPE’ key provides one step backwards, the ‘ENTER’ key moves one step forwards, and the ‘F1’ key gives additional information or help. The arrow key can also be used to navigate through the menu items. The ‘BACKSPACE’ key deletes the last character entered. Finally, colors are used to help the user perceive the correctness of his actions: 앫 The background of all the menus and forms is black. 앫 The names of the required input items (e.g. ‘forest name’:) are in dark gray. 앫 The ‘highlighted’ items of a menu and the user’s inputs are with white characters on a blue background. 앫 The status line information is in green. 앫 Important messages, like a ‘YES/NO’ choice, are displayed in yellow. 앫 All error messages are in red, accompanied by a sound signal.
5. Discussion The electronically stored forest fire data, apart from their internal information value, can be further used in various ways for more complicated analysis of the fire characteristics related to local, regional or national fire management planning. Overall, the use of computerized forest fire data bases has found numerous applications in Mediterranean countries and worldwide:
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1. Long duration fire records with acceptable precision have been used for fire risk assessment. In the USA, the firestat program, based at the USDA National Computer Center, is used for the computer storage of forest fire data taken from the forest service ‘individual fire report forms’ (USDA Forest Service, 1996). The firestat files are periodically transmitted to the NIFMID data base. The NIFMID (National Interagency Fire Management Integrated Database) is a database of combined historical weather and fire statistical data, which are used for the determination of fire danger indexes, critical for fire suppression readiness (Andrews and Bradshaw, 1997; USDA Forest Service, 1993). Similar programs for forest fire data inventory and analysis are currently in use in the USA (Schuster et al., 1993; Main et al., 1982). 2. Fire records can serve as a base to evaluate fire suppression effectiveness during severe fire-weather conditions. The computerized forest fire records for the period 1970–1984 in California, were used to analyze the effectiveness of the fire suppression efforts during simultaneous fires. The variables considered were: burned area; suppression time; initial attack time; and maximum number of firefighting forces. The data were examined using boxplots, scatterplots and Pearson and Kendal correlation coefficients in order to determine general trends. They revealed strong burned area–suppression time correlation. Also, groups of matched fire sets were formed and examined in order to discover differences in the suppression times and conditions (Bednar et al., 1990). 3. Forest fire statistical data are used in developing various forest fire models. An interesting deterministic model for stochastic fire occurrence prediction was developed for the California Department of Forestry (Fried and Gilless, 1988). The foundation of the model is based on: 3.1. distribution of number of fires per year; 3.2. distribution of fires by season; 3.3. distribution of fires by the time of the day; and 3.4. frequency and severity of multiple fire days. The data for the model were taken from the computerized forest fire database of the California Department of Forestry. The model showed remarkable similarities between historical and simulated fire data, taking into account that the model does not take into consideration the fire occurrence as related to specific causes or fire weather. 4. In Australia, the usefulness of computerized forest fire statistics for fire management decision making, has been stressed (Beck, 1988). Also, extensive historical forest fire data were analyzed for creating a fire management expert system for Kakadu National Park (Davis et al., 1986). 5. Forest fire statistics have been mathematically ana-
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lyzed to determine temporal trends in the annual burned area. In Canada, computerized fire data from 1918 to 1986 were analyzed on a 10-year basis to discover possible historical patterns of the annually burned area. Three techniques were applied: simple arithmetic means; exponential means; and binomial means. The binomial means were the most satisfactory in clarifying trends of the annually burned area in time series (Van Wagner, 1988). 6. Another application of computerized fire records can be the establishment of fire histories and fire regimes in various forest ecosystems. Stand and fire data, as well as altitude, aspect and watershed systems information were combined to produce stand-origin maps. Fire frequencies were examined to determine the length of the fire season, the geographical distribution and the causes of fire (Johnson et al., 1990). The negative exponential and the Weibull distributions were applied to historical forest fire data to simulate the fire regimes of the various forest types. Both models explained the temporal distribution of the fires for the specific fire regime (Johnson and Van Wagner, 1985). 7. In South Africa, computerized analysis of selected data for the ‘fynbos’ vegetation fires (fire cause, elevation, aspect and slope of burned area), was used to calculate the cumulative probability of fire occurrence, using the frequency analysis of fire intervals. The analysis was conducted in order to investigate possible changes in fire frequency due to the introduction of prescribed burning. A significant relationship was found between the fire intervals and the elevation of the burned area (Brown et al., 1991). In view of the above, pyrostat has many potential applications in the fields of fire ecology and fire prevention and suppression planning, since presently the analysis of fire data in Mediterranean countries has been cumbersome to impossible. pyrostat provides detailed information about all the recorded fire events, cumulatively presented at any combination of temporal (day, week, month, year, multi-year) and spatial (forest district, region, prefecture, country) scales. It also searches and presents specific fire data under user-specified conditions, thus facilitating the analysis of the fire environment. pyrostat is currently in the implementation phase in Greece, Cyprus and Tunisia.
6. Conclusions The overall purpose of pyrostat is to improve the awareness of the forest fire phenomenon at a regional and national level for the countries of the Mediterranean Basin, and thus, to promote the development of concrete initiatives in issues of successful fire management.
Towards this direction, pyrostat offers many advantages: 1. It is specifically designed for the Mediterranean countries, by taking into account all the input data of the various forest fire report forms that are currently in use in the Mediterranean Basin. Thus, it enables the establishment of a centralized forest fire database for all the Mediterranean countries, which may serve as a common decision-support tool in the formulation of general fire management policies and regulations at an international level (European Union, MAGREB). 2. It fills an existing gap in the electronic storage and process of forest fire data in the countries of the Mediterranean Basin. pyrostat is organized on modern software principles, provides complete results in different formats, and thus, supports a greater reliability of the fire data collection, inventory and analysis process. Also, it is ‘user-friendly’ in an interactive mode and by reducing possible user errors, without requiring special understanding of computer systems and programming. 3. pyrostat can be adapted to different administrative levels of collecting and analyzing fire data (local, regional, central), thus providing additional flexibility and successful implementation of the outputs. It can be adapted to the diversity of local fire data recording conditions, without losing integrity at a national, and compatibility at an international level. 4. Finally, pyrostat may serve as a useful tool for international cooperation and information exchange on forest fire data in the Mediterranean region. It, facilitates the inventory and exchange of fire information among countries with similar fire problems, thus improving the awareness of the forest fire phenomenon and promoting collaboration in fire prevention issues.
Acknowledgements EU DGI and C.I.H.E.A.M.–M.A.I.Chania jointly provided the auspices for the development of pyrostat. The author would like to thank in particular Dr Placido Plaza, Principal Administrator of C.I.H.E.A.M., and Mr Alkinoos Nikolaidis, Director of M.A.I.Chania, for their support. Mr Grisha Yordanov, working on his M.Sc. thesis, wrote the algorithm of pyrostat in turbo pascal. I am grateful for his assistance.
References Andrews, P.L., Bradshaw, L.S., 1997. FIRES: Fire information retrieval and evaluation system-a program for fire danger rating
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analysis. USDA Forest Service, Gen. Tech. Rep. INT-GTR-367. USDA Forest Service, Ogden, UT. Baase, S., 1987. Computer Algorithms. Addison–Wesley, London. Beck, J.A., 1988. Decision support for Australian fire management. M.Sc. Thesis, Department of Forestry, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Bednar, L.F., Mees, R., Strauss, D., 1990. Fire suppression effectiveness for simultaneous fires: an examination of fire histories. Western Journal of Applied Forestry 5, 16–19. Brown, P.J., Manders, P.T., Bands, D.P., Kruger, F.J., Andrag, R.H., 1991. Prescribed burning as a conservation management practice: a case history from the Cederberg mountain, Cape Province. Biological Conservation 56, 133–150. Dale, N., Weems, C., 1987. Introduction to Pascal and Structured Programming. D.C. Heat, New York. Davis, J.R., Hoare, J.R., Nanninga, P.M., 1986. Developing a fire management expert system for Kakadu National Park, Australia. Journal of Environmental Management 22, 215–227. Dimitrakopoulos, A.P., 1999. A common forest fire data base for the Mediterranean countries. Options Mediterraneennes 26, 113–118. European Union, 1993. Pan-European Conference on Forest Protection in Europe, Strasbourg 1990 (Resolution No. 3). Report of the twelve member states, DG-VI FII 2. European Union, Brussels, Belgium. European Union, 1996. Forest fires in the South of the European Union-Pilot project in preparation for setting up the Community forest-fire information system, DG-VI FII 2. European Union, Brussels, Belgium. Food and Agriculture Organization/ICAMAS, 1998. Workshop on the treatment of forest fire data bases. Hammamet, Tunisia. Fried, J.S., Gilless, J.K., 1988. Stochastic representation of fire occurrence in a wildland fire protection planning model for California. Forest Science 34, 948–959.
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Garland, S., 1984. Advanced Pascal Programming Techniques. Borland Osborne/McGraw Hill, Berkeley, CA. Guiran, M., 1992. Operation Promethee: Bilan des incendies des forets en 1992. Direction des Systemes Informatiques du Departement de Basse Rhone, France. Jamsa, K., Namerroff, S., 1988. Turbo Pascal Programmer’s Library. Borland Osborn/McGraw Hill, Berkeley, CA. Johnson, E.A., Van Wagner, C.E., 1985. The theory and use of two fire history models. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 15, 214–220. Johnson, E.A., Fryer, G.I., Heathcott, M.J., 1990. The influence of man and climate on frequency of fire in the interior wet belt forest, British Columbia. Journal of Ecology 78, 403–412. Main, W.A., Straub, R.J., Paananen, D.M., 1982. In: FIREFAMILY: Fire planning with historic weather data. USDA, For. Serv. Gen. Tech. Rep. NC-73. USDA, , St. Paul, MN. Merida, J.C., 1994. Forest Fire Statistics. ICONA, Madrid. Press, W.H., Flannery, B.P., Teukolsky, S.A., Veterling, W.T., 1989. Numerical Recipes in Pascal. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Schneiderman, B., 1989. Designing the User Interface. Addison–Wesley, New York. Schuster, E.G., Leefers, L.A., Thompson, J.E., 1993. A guide to computer-based analytical tools for implementing national forest plans. USDA Forest Service, Gen. Tech. Rep. INT-296. USDA Forest Service, 1993. National Interagency Fire Management Integrated Database (NIFMID); Reference Manual. Forest Service, Department of Fire and Aviation Management, Washington, DC. USDA Forest Service, 1996. FIRESTAT User’s Guide. Forest Service, Department of Fire and Aviation Management, Washington, DC. Van Wagner, C.E., 1988. The historical pattern of the annual burned area in Canada. Forestry Chronicle 64, 182–185.
Product Review
pyrostat — a computer program for forest fire data inventory and analysis in Mediterranean countries A.P. Dimitrakopoulos
*
Department of Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 228, 540 06 Thessaloniki, Greece Received 29 June 2000; received in revised form 3 September 2000; accepted 3 November 2000
Abstract pyrostat, a computer program for forest fire data inventory and analysis, is presented and analyzed. Detailed description of the system analysis considerations, program structure, and user–interface principles is given. pyrostat is specifically designed to alleviate current problems and anticipate future needs of the forest fire data recording processes in all the countries of the Mediterranean Basin. The program electronically files forest fire information and produces reports with cumulative quantitative data on forest fires (number of fires, area burned, fire causes, type of vegetation burned, fire suppression parameters, etc.), at various temporal (single day, month, year or multi-year) and spatial (local, regional, national) scales. It also provides the user with the option to isolate, group and retrieve recorded fires that share in common a combination of factors. pyrostat may serve as a common tool for forest fire management planning and exchange of homogeneous information on forest fire data, among Mediterranean countries. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Forest fires; Fire management; Computer applications; System analysis; Mediterranean Basin
1. Introduction The need for a common forest fire information system was justified during the Strasbourg Conference on the “Protection of Forests in Europe” (January 1990), where the European Union (EU) and 27 other countries agreed to Resolution No. 3, calling for a feasibility study on a centralized forest fire data base, in order to facilitate and promote the exchange of fire information among various countries and to improve fire prevention strategies. Specifically, Resolution No. 3 stated: “A common forest fire data bank will facilitate and encourage the exchange of homogeneous information on forest fires, which could improve fire prevention and promote discussion of the forest fire problem among different countries, without substituting with a standard universal system all the different national systems…” (European Union, 1993). Consequently, the European Union with Regulation No. 804/94, directed all its member countries that have a serious forest fire problem (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece), to provide annually a “minimum common * Tel.: +30-31-992-774; fax: +30-31-472-003.
core of information on forest fires”: number of fires and total area burned (forested and non-forested) per geographical region, detection time, initial attack time, extinction time, and fire cause. Implemented at the EU level, the minimum core of information on forest fires is destined to serve as a starting point for the creation of a pan-European central forest fire data base (European Union, 1996). FAO organized a series of workshops on the “Treatment of Forest Fire Data Bases” for the North African and Middle Eastern countries. The objective of the workshops was the formulation of a computerized, common forest fire data base among the countries of this region (Food and Agriculture Organization/ICAMAS, 1998). However, forest fire data collection and analysis processes differ significantly among the various countries of the Mediterranean Basin: 1. In Spain, since 1968 the fire data inventory and primary processing is conducted at the forest district level, using dbase iv. Fire statistics reports are generated by every district. The forest fire information accumulated in every forest district is transferred, on a monthly basis, via magnetic carriers to the General
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Forest Service Headquarters (ICONA) at Madrid, where it is converted by a C++ program to the central database format, operating in UNIX environment (Merida, 1994). Because of the decentralization of the information processing, the Spanish system has increased flexibility and ability of adaptation to different regional conditions. In France since 1973, a forest fire data base named “Operation Promethee” operates in the 15 Mediterranean districts of Southern France. Forest fire data from reports provided by the forest service, the police and the fire departments, are recorded and stored in the database. In 1992, “Operation Promethee” was connected to the national computer network MINITEL, and thus became accessible to the general public (Guiran, 1992). Temporal and spatial fire information for the different districts is available in tabular and graphical form. In Italy, the regional forest districts document forest fires in special fire report forms. Only the central administration in Rome uses computer software for fire data processing, written in prolog. In Portugal, at regional level, the forest fire statistics are entered on special “forest fire documentation forms”. Only the central administration at Lisbon uses a database (dbase iv) for electronically storing forest fire information, which is gradually being converted into a new relational database, designed and implemented with the tools of Microsoft access 2.0. The Forestry Service of Cyprus uses a DOS-based application in dbase iii plus (forfires) for forest fire data storage and primary processing, and a commercial statistical package (spss) for the statistical analysis. Morocco, Tunisia, Greece and Turkey manually record forest fire information on special “fire report forms”. No further computer processing of the data is conducted, except in Greece and Turkey, were they are stored in computer files with a fortran program.
In the processes of collecting, storing and analyzing forest fire information in Mediterranean countries, four major related problems emerged: 1. There is no compatibility among the type of forest fire data recorded in every country, although the fire regimes and the fire suppression objectives are very similar. 2. Very few countries use special software for forest fire data processing. Most countries use either simple, commercial and, usually, not very effective programs, or simply do not have any program. 3. The persons in charge of forest fire data processing are usually experts in fire management, but have little knowledge of computer systems and, usually, have no knowledge of computer programming.
4. The central administration and regional forest directorates in the same country, often use different means and methodology for recording and analyzing forest fire data. To alleviate these problems, a new computer program for fire data processing in the countries of the Mediterranean Basin, should fulfill the following requirements: 1. Provide compatible forest fire data for all the countries and, at the same time, reflect the individual fire situation of every country. 2. Fill a gap between complex and simple forest fire data processing software, with a program of moderate complexity, without adversely affecting the quality of the output information. 3. Employ a ‘user-friendly’ computer interface that does not require special knowledge of computer systems and programming, with emphasis on avoiding operator errors. 4. Provide the option of applying the same forest fire data inventory program at different administrative levels (forest station, forest district, forest directorate, general forest service administration), thus providing additional flexibility. In this study, a computer program for forest fire data inventory and analysis, called pyrostat, is presented. pyrostat is specifically designed for common use among the various countries of the Mediterranean Basin (both European and non-European), by fulfilling these requirements and also by taking into account the particular forest fire data collection process of every country.
2. System analysis considerations of pyrostat The information needs for any forest fire database are numerous and vary in nature, from extensive data on the fire regime and fire behavior, to information about the technological and human firefighting resources. The problem of collecting and processing the right information about forest fires is very complex and affected by a large number of different factors: vegetation; weather; topography; fire suppression capabilities; socio-economic conditions (European Union, 1996). These factors are inter-related and each one consists of several internal parameters. The main difficulty is the collection of the necessary data in such a way that it will be easy to collect and record and, at the same time, adequately describe the fire conditions and fire control events (Food and Agriculture Organization/ICAMAS, 1998). The system designer must decide which data items to record and the way to record them (in a printed form and/or electronically). When all the activities are analyzed, a decision must be reached concerning which of them
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should be recorded manually on paper forms and which should be processed via a computer program. In the Mediterranean countries of Europe, all fire data are initially recorded manually on paper forms (white boxes, Fig. 1), while the further processing of the data may be computerized (gray boxes, Fig. 1). For every wildland fire, the standard procedure in all European Countries is to complete a fire report form. These are the main carriers of fire-related information, and basically serve two purposes: (1) answer multiple questions concerning the fire conditions and the effectiveness of human intervention in extinguishing the fire; and (2) reveal long-term trends, when records are consistently kept over long periods of time. The usefulness of such forms is directly related to the type, amount and precision of the fire information they contain. This question, seemingly simple, can present a major difficulty since the fire report forms must be easy to fill-in under field conditions and, at the same time, as complete as possible. A balance between these contradictory requirements is usually very difficult to obtain (Dimitrakopoulos, 1999). Another conceptual problem is the different definition ascribed to the same fire parameter in different countries, such as: “definition of forest land”, “which and how many categories of forest fire causes should be recorded”, “threshold value of minimum area burned for a fire to be recorded”, or “methodology of monetary assessment of fire damages” (European Union, 1996). In view of the above, for the creation of pyrostat, the forest fire documentation forms from nine Mediterranean countries were exhaustively studied: Portugal; Spain; France; Italy; Greece; Turkey; Cyprus; Tunisia; Morocco. The common forest fire input data worksheet (screen) that was derived for pyrostat, is a compendium of all the different forest fire data recorded in every
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country, thematically grouped in categories, after rigorously checking the particular definition of every recorded parameter in every country.
3. pyrostat program structure pyrostat is structured according to modular programming principles, so it is easy to change or update particular modules without affecting other modules or the data structure (Dale and Weems, 1987). The program is split into modules performing different uniform tasks, such as: maintenance of disk functions, user’s interface, data display, data processing and printing. All the modules were tested separately and are automatically assembled into a program during compilation. Program data is stored and processed in coded form and is searched and retrieved with Sequential and Binary Search algorithms (Baase, 1987) and sorted with Shell and Quick Sort algorithms (Press et al., 1989). pyrostat is written in turbo pascal 5.5 and consists of: (1) integrated development environment (IDE) with screen program editor, compiler and debugger; and (2) standard pascal libraries and routines (Jamsa and Namerroff, 1988; Garland, 1984). It requires a standard computer configuration (i486 or higher, VGA monitor and printer) and has direct linkage to the SAS statistical package, for statistical analysis of the fire data. The pyrostat computer program performs three main functions: 1. Inventories and creates a computer file for every fire event that is recorded on each country’s “forest fire documentation form”. The fire data are entered into the computer via a specifically designed input screen worksheet.
Fig. 1. Main components of the forest fire data collection and retrieval process in the Mediterranean countries of Europe.
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2. Generates forest fire reports which present, in tabular and graphical form, the following fire information: number of fires; total area burned; and average area burned per fire. This information is provided separately for every fire input parameter, either for every forest administrative unit (e.g. forest directorate) or as a total for different geographical areas and the whole country. pyrostat fire data can be presented for a single day, week, month, year, or in a time-series of up to ten consecutive years. 3. Selects and retrieves forest fires which burned under various meteorological, topographic, vegetative, pyric and administrative ‘specific conditions’, that are set by the user. pyrostat searches through the recorded forest fires and selects only the ones that fulfill the given conditions. Two main modules control the fire information inventory and processing in pyrostat: (1) manipulate fire records; and (2) generate fire report. 3.1. The ‘manipulate fire records’ module This module consists of three submodules (data storing and retrieving, data maintenance, data transfer) structured in eight control or maintenance functions (Fig. 2a): create/edit, view/browse, delete, undelete, rename, write, merge, and print records. The module’s main function is to create, file and modify forest fire records. The pyrostat forest fire data entry worksheet (Fig. 3) of the ‘create/edit’ function, receives from the screen in an interactive mode and, subsequently, stores into the computer memory, the following input parameters that are entered by the user from the various ‘forest fire documentation forms’: 앫 Fire location: forest directorate, forest station, forest, locality, geographic coordinates. 앫 Date and time (hour and minute) of fire detection, fire report, initial attack, aerial attack (if any), fire control, fire extinction. 앫 Fire cause: four major categories are distinguished: arson, negligence, unknown, natural. The specific fire causes that are also included are: lightning; range improvement; agricultural activities; hunters/tourists; forest operations; military operations; garbage burning; electric power lines; mentally disturbed/children. 앫 Meteorological conditions: wind speed; wind direction; air temperature; relative humidity; days since last rainfall before the fire. 앫 Topographic conditions: aspect; slope; elevation; parent rock; soil type; litter layer. 앫 Area burned (ha) by vegetation species and type: there is a choice of 20 dominant vegetation species. The vegetation types are: tall forest; coppice forest; shrublands; grasslands; agricultural fields. They are
앫 앫 앫 앫 앫 앫 앫
distinguished in ‘dense’ (⬎50% cover) and ‘sparse’ (⬍50% cover). Ownership status of the forest area burned: public; private; municipal; other. Type of fire: surface; crown; mixed. Suppression forces involved (human resources): forest service employees, professional firefighters, civil guard, civilians, army/police, other. Suppression forces involved (equipment): number and type of engines; dozers; aircrafts; helicopters; other. Suppression methods: ground attack; aerial attack; mixed. Fire break-out point. Costs and losses: loss of human lives; loss of animals; value of timber lost; suppression cost. Forest commodities of non-market values are not recorded.
3.2. The ‘generate fire report’ module This is the output module of pyrostat, with a main function of presenting forest fire records previously stored by the program. This module consists of three submodules (Fig. 2b): (1) time-series report; (2) specific conditions report; and (3) print chart report. 3.2.1. ‘Time-series’ submodule This submodule generates reports in tabular form regarding the number of fires, the area burned and the average area burned per fire, separately for every major input parameter of the pyrostat. These outputs can be cumulatively presented for any combination of: 앫 One or more forest districts, geographical and/or administrative regions. 앫 One or more years (up to ten). 앫 Different area units (hectares, decars, acres). The outputs can be directed to different types of output devices: 앫 Screen (the tables are presented in graphical mode). 앫 Printer. 앫 Different types of data files accepted by major statistical programs. Simple data output, SAS and EXCEL file formats, are supported by the program. 앫 Chart format to be printed by the ‘print chart’ submodule of the program.
3.2.2. The ‘specific conditions’ submodule The ‘specific conditions’ submodule answers to queries formulated by the user, regarding specific conditions of forest fire events. This submodule provides the user with the option to isolate, group and retrieve specific fires that share in common a combination of factors. The
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Fig. 2.
‘Manipulate records’ and ‘generate report’ modules of pyrostat.
Fig. 3.
pyrostat fire data entry worksheet.
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program user obtains a query window where all available factors can be combined with Boolean operations (AND/OR) and linked with comparative relations (more, less than or equal to). Forest fire records can be selectively shown, according to any combination of factors, for example, “forest fires that occurred in elevations less than 800 m, with relative humidity more than 50%, air temperature more than 35°C, etc.” (Fig. 4). Thus, outputs are according to requests formulated by the user, regarding the specific conditions that must be common to all selected fire records. After formulating a query, the expected fire information can be directed to: (1) a screen, displaying the full fire forms; or (2) a printer, showing only the most important items from the fire forms. In either case a summary is displayed, showing the number of the fires, the area burned and the percentage of the total burned area that this area represents, for the specified period and under the specified conditions. 3.2.3. The ‘print chart’ submodule In this submodule the user is able to print chart files saved previously from the ‘time series’ submodule, on a laser printer supporting the HP/GL 2 printer/plotter language. An option exists to view the graph on screen before the printing. An example of pyrostat’s output tables is given in Fig. 5. While having the results displayed in tabular form on the screen, the user can visually assess the data in the form of a pie or bar chart. These tables and charts facilitate the analysis of forest fire phenomenon from various viewpoints, while the relative importance of each separate factor can be estimated both temporally and spatially.
4. Pyrostat user’s interface In pyrostat, ‘menu’ and ‘fill-in forms’ options have been adopted (Jamsa and Namerroff, 1988). Thus, a linear tree-structured menu guides the user towards the
Fig. 4.
pyrostat ‘specific conditions’ submodule example.
Fig. 5. pyrostat output example: (a) distribution of number of fires according to fire causes for the whole country (Greece) for the decade 1986–1995; and (b) distribution of average area burned per fire for the Sterea (Greece) Forest Directorate for the year 1995, according to elevation and month of the year.
desired fire information. Two types of menus are used: ‘choice-driven’ and ‘information asking’. Every menu is surrounded by a frame, limiting the operational space. At the top center of the frame, a title indicates the function of the menu, while at the bottom of the frame, the last line (‘status line’) provides brief information on the available choices or the state of the current procedure in action. In the ‘choice-driven’ menus, the user is informed about his relative position in the menu structure by a number, at the top right corner of the menu frame. The maximum number of items in a menu (the breadth of the menu) is kept between 4 and 8, and the levels of menus (the depth of a selection) in the range of 2–3, as suggested by Schneiderman (1989). The choice of an item can be made by ‘highlighting’ the desired item using the arrow keys and then select it with the ‘ENTER’ key, or directly, by pressing the first letter of the item, which is unique for the menu (and has different color). In the case of the ‘fill-in forms’, pressing the
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‘ENTER’ key leads the user through the logical order of input. If an entry is made to the program through the screen, a blue square indicates the maximum possible length of the entry. If an error is detected, an error box with the appropriate message appears at the bottom of the screen. At the end of the input sequence, an appropriate message box informs the user of the completion of the form and suggests necessary steps for further processing. All the keyboard entries are syntactically controlled for correctness, depending on their position in the program. The place for the user’s input is indicated by the default blinking cursor. Only the appropriate set of options is accepted, otherwise a sound signal is produced indicating incorrect key selection. Three different types of entries are available, dependent on the input information: 1. String or character sequence of any sort (not controlled syntactically). 2. Integer value, whose range is predetermined and itemdependent (controlled syntactically). 3. Integer value-item from the database nomenclature. Following general conventions, the ‘ESCAPE’ key provides one step backwards, the ‘ENTER’ key moves one step forwards, and the ‘F1’ key gives additional information or help. The arrow key can also be used to navigate through the menu items. The ‘BACKSPACE’ key deletes the last character entered. Finally, colors are used to help the user perceive the correctness of his actions: 앫 The background of all the menus and forms is black. 앫 The names of the required input items (e.g. ‘forest name’:) are in dark gray. 앫 The ‘highlighted’ items of a menu and the user’s inputs are with white characters on a blue background. 앫 The status line information is in green. 앫 Important messages, like a ‘YES/NO’ choice, are displayed in yellow. 앫 All error messages are in red, accompanied by a sound signal.
5. Discussion The electronically stored forest fire data, apart from their internal information value, can be further used in various ways for more complicated analysis of the fire characteristics related to local, regional or national fire management planning. Overall, the use of computerized forest fire data bases has found numerous applications in Mediterranean countries and worldwide:
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1. Long duration fire records with acceptable precision have been used for fire risk assessment. In the USA, the firestat program, based at the USDA National Computer Center, is used for the computer storage of forest fire data taken from the forest service ‘individual fire report forms’ (USDA Forest Service, 1996). The firestat files are periodically transmitted to the NIFMID data base. The NIFMID (National Interagency Fire Management Integrated Database) is a database of combined historical weather and fire statistical data, which are used for the determination of fire danger indexes, critical for fire suppression readiness (Andrews and Bradshaw, 1997; USDA Forest Service, 1993). Similar programs for forest fire data inventory and analysis are currently in use in the USA (Schuster et al., 1993; Main et al., 1982). 2. Fire records can serve as a base to evaluate fire suppression effectiveness during severe fire-weather conditions. The computerized forest fire records for the period 1970–1984 in California, were used to analyze the effectiveness of the fire suppression efforts during simultaneous fires. The variables considered were: burned area; suppression time; initial attack time; and maximum number of firefighting forces. The data were examined using boxplots, scatterplots and Pearson and Kendal correlation coefficients in order to determine general trends. They revealed strong burned area–suppression time correlation. Also, groups of matched fire sets were formed and examined in order to discover differences in the suppression times and conditions (Bednar et al., 1990). 3. Forest fire statistical data are used in developing various forest fire models. An interesting deterministic model for stochastic fire occurrence prediction was developed for the California Department of Forestry (Fried and Gilless, 1988). The foundation of the model is based on: 3.1. distribution of number of fires per year; 3.2. distribution of fires by season; 3.3. distribution of fires by the time of the day; and 3.4. frequency and severity of multiple fire days. The data for the model were taken from the computerized forest fire database of the California Department of Forestry. The model showed remarkable similarities between historical and simulated fire data, taking into account that the model does not take into consideration the fire occurrence as related to specific causes or fire weather. 4. In Australia, the usefulness of computerized forest fire statistics for fire management decision making, has been stressed (Beck, 1988). Also, extensive historical forest fire data were analyzed for creating a fire management expert system for Kakadu National Park (Davis et al., 1986). 5. Forest fire statistics have been mathematically ana-
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lyzed to determine temporal trends in the annual burned area. In Canada, computerized fire data from 1918 to 1986 were analyzed on a 10-year basis to discover possible historical patterns of the annually burned area. Three techniques were applied: simple arithmetic means; exponential means; and binomial means. The binomial means were the most satisfactory in clarifying trends of the annually burned area in time series (Van Wagner, 1988). 6. Another application of computerized fire records can be the establishment of fire histories and fire regimes in various forest ecosystems. Stand and fire data, as well as altitude, aspect and watershed systems information were combined to produce stand-origin maps. Fire frequencies were examined to determine the length of the fire season, the geographical distribution and the causes of fire (Johnson et al., 1990). The negative exponential and the Weibull distributions were applied to historical forest fire data to simulate the fire regimes of the various forest types. Both models explained the temporal distribution of the fires for the specific fire regime (Johnson and Van Wagner, 1985). 7. In South Africa, computerized analysis of selected data for the ‘fynbos’ vegetation fires (fire cause, elevation, aspect and slope of burned area), was used to calculate the cumulative probability of fire occurrence, using the frequency analysis of fire intervals. The analysis was conducted in order to investigate possible changes in fire frequency due to the introduction of prescribed burning. A significant relationship was found between the fire intervals and the elevation of the burned area (Brown et al., 1991). In view of the above, pyrostat has many potential applications in the fields of fire ecology and fire prevention and suppression planning, since presently the analysis of fire data in Mediterranean countries has been cumbersome to impossible. pyrostat provides detailed information about all the recorded fire events, cumulatively presented at any combination of temporal (day, week, month, year, multi-year) and spatial (forest district, region, prefecture, country) scales. It also searches and presents specific fire data under user-specified conditions, thus facilitating the analysis of the fire environment. pyrostat is currently in the implementation phase in Greece, Cyprus and Tunisia.
6. Conclusions The overall purpose of pyrostat is to improve the awareness of the forest fire phenomenon at a regional and national level for the countries of the Mediterranean Basin, and thus, to promote the development of concrete initiatives in issues of successful fire management.
Towards this direction, pyrostat offers many advantages: 1. It is specifically designed for the Mediterranean countries, by taking into account all the input data of the various forest fire report forms that are currently in use in the Mediterranean Basin. Thus, it enables the establishment of a centralized forest fire database for all the Mediterranean countries, which may serve as a common decision-support tool in the formulation of general fire management policies and regulations at an international level (European Union, MAGREB). 2. It fills an existing gap in the electronic storage and process of forest fire data in the countries of the Mediterranean Basin. pyrostat is organized on modern software principles, provides complete results in different formats, and thus, supports a greater reliability of the fire data collection, inventory and analysis process. Also, it is ‘user-friendly’ in an interactive mode and by reducing possible user errors, without requiring special understanding of computer systems and programming. 3. pyrostat can be adapted to different administrative levels of collecting and analyzing fire data (local, regional, central), thus providing additional flexibility and successful implementation of the outputs. It can be adapted to the diversity of local fire data recording conditions, without losing integrity at a national, and compatibility at an international level. 4. Finally, pyrostat may serve as a useful tool for international cooperation and information exchange on forest fire data in the Mediterranean region. It, facilitates the inventory and exchange of fire information among countries with similar fire problems, thus improving the awareness of the forest fire phenomenon and promoting collaboration in fire prevention issues.
Acknowledgements EU DGI and C.I.H.E.A.M.–M.A.I.Chania jointly provided the auspices for the development of pyrostat. The author would like to thank in particular Dr Placido Plaza, Principal Administrator of C.I.H.E.A.M., and Mr Alkinoos Nikolaidis, Director of M.A.I.Chania, for their support. Mr Grisha Yordanov, working on his M.Sc. thesis, wrote the algorithm of pyrostat in turbo pascal. I am grateful for his assistance.
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