Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
- time scales used to describe the state of the vegetation and the ground at
different seasons, or weather types that has occurred in area over a period of several
weeks, which influences the water content of the vegetation and of the ground;
- there is also the time scale that deals with all of the current weather factors and
these can be measured in hours or minutes.
8.1.2.3.
Vulnerability
The term vulnerability is used to describe all of the factors which group together
the impacts that humans and their development have had on nature. The type of
vegetation that is present in these areas plays a key role as far as the economic
effects of fires are concerned. The problem with the Mediterranean forest is that it
takes place in a complex topography, and it does not have any real economic value.
This fact prevents a fire risk management as efficient as the one that exists in the
department of Landes in the South West of France, which produces a best quality
wood, which is very easy exploitable. The main problem associated with forest fires
is that they become houses fires, and more, they pose a threat to human and animal
life. Unfortunately, some forest fires reach the end of their course by arriving in
towns or by burning around the perimeters of villages or towns. In the town of
Hyères in the South of France, cars that were parked on a street near the forest were
burnt on the August 1, 1989; and in July 1997, the southern French city of Marseille
was surrounded by flames on all sides.
Certain prevention plans have been introduced in France with the aim of fighting
against the building of houses inside of the forest, which are vulnerable to forest
fires. These prevention plans include: plans to decrease the risk of forest fires, the
publication of land-use maps and urban area maps. Although the amount of
vegetation (which acts as a combustible) around the access roads that lead to these
houses has been reduced; this decrease in vegetation is not enough to prevent a fire
from spreading in the event of strong winds. In the event of a serious fire, the main
priority of firefighters is to protect the lives of the inhabitants of these houses, as
well as protecting the houses themselves, before fighting the flames through the
forest.
The term vulnerability is also strongly linked to the strategic and tactical efforts
adopted by mankind to decrease the susceptibility (such as introducing fire lines,
clearing up areas in which there is vegetation, and creating less flammable trees
species plantations). The vulnerability concerns also the efforts to prevent fire
eclosions through public awareness campaigns, and to detect them early (through
monitoring and air patrols) and methods that can be used to fight a fire, once it has
been declared.
The use of geographical information in all of this is extremely important and it is
being increasingly used within GIS. It is extremely important that the information
available in each layer of the GIS be frequently updated in this high-risk domain, on
