ArcFUEL is a LIFE+ project; the LIFE+ program, EU’s only financial instrument dedicated exclusively to the environment, is in turn broken down into three priority areas; ArcFUEL comes under nature and biodiversity. The project is being led by EPSILON International SA; apart from GMV, the other participants are outstanding European laboratories and organizations involved in forest-fire research and prevention (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Algosystems SA, ADAI and Epsilon Italia srl).
The ArcFUEL methodology, harnessing remote-sensing and earth-observation techniques, has proved its mettle in a series of tests in the Mediterranean, the area most heavily affected by forest fires within the European Union.
Forest fires obey no borders and it is frequent in summer to see fires spread from one member state to a neighboring one. Effective management of forest fires calls for fuel mapping, all too often missing in practice. With very few exceptions Europe’s existing forest-fuel maps are local or regional in scope and bear no uniformity from one to another, drawn up on different dates and with different methodologies and approaches. ArcFUEL aims to remedy this shortfall by standardizing mapping procedures and ensuring they are compatible with INSPIRE’s geospatial data schemes.
The composition, structure and state of forest fuel are all crucial factors in determining how a fire develops and spreads. Knowledge of fuel models and their spatial pattern is a vital spoke in the coordination of the best forest-fire management strategy.
GMV’s contribution to ArcFUEL includes definition of the workflow and process chain and also implementation of this chain in the two Spanish pilot areas, one of them located in the Biosphere Reserve of Sierra de las Nieves (training area) and the second in the provinces of Malaga and Cordoba (complete working area). To carry out this project GMV is tapping into the spatial data generated by the Environmental Information of Andalusia Network (La Red de Información Ambiental de Andalucía: REDIAM) and by Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment.