Environment International Mapping Combined Wildfire and Heat Stress
Environment International 127 (2019) 21–34 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Environment International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envint Mapping combined wildfire and heat stress hazards to improve evidence- based decision making T ⁎ Claudia Vitoloa, , Claudia Di Napolia,b, Francesca Di Giuseppea, Hannah L. Clokeb,c,d,e, Florian Pappenbergera a European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts, Reading RG2 9AX, UK b Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading, UK c Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, UK d Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden e Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science, CNDS, Uppsala, Sweden ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Heat stress and forest fires are often considered highly correlated hazards as extreme temperatures play a key Wildfire role in both occurrences. This commonality can influence how civil protection and local responders deploy Multi hazard resources on the ground and could lead to an underestimation of potential impacts, as people could be less Geospatial analysis resilient when exposed to multiple hazards. In this work, we provide a simple methodology to identify areas Decision making prone to concurrent hazards, exemplified with, but not limited to, heat stress and fire danger. We use the Fire weather index (FWI) combined heat and forest fire event that affected Europe in June 2017 to demonstrate that the methodology can Universal thermal climate index (UTCI) be used for analysing past events as well as making predictions, by using reanalysis and medium-range weather forecasts, respectively. We present new spatial layers that map the combined danger and make suggestions on how these could be used in the context of a Multi-Hazard Early Warning System.
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