“Visual forest fire weather index (VFFWI)” a mathematical modelfor the prediction of forest fires weather danger in Mediterraneanecosystems

摘要

The administration of the defense programs against forest fires in mediterranean areas has experienced in the last years an important growth in refers to the methods and material resources for the extinction. However the activities of prevention have not had a similar development, on the contrary, they evolve to a limited speed, due among other questions to the lack of assignment of economic resources and research programs. For this reason and with the intention of advancing in the knowledge of the meteorological information and their repercussion in forest fires danger, it was developed between the years 1997 and 2000, an experimentation project financed by the DGVI of the European Commission and the Forest Administration of Andalusia, for the elaboration of a model of evaluation of the weather danger condition implication on forest fires in mediterranean forest ecosystems. For this project I was considered as reference the Canadian forest fire danger rating system. The developed model allows to evaluate the danger, in function of the meteorological parameters, the moisture of the surface fine fuels, the moisture of the fuels located to seven centimeters of depth and the probability of ignition, making also the forest fire weather danger index, and a specific index to evaluate the initial propagation. An advanced version of this model has included an empirical model for to know the rate spread of fire in function of the fuels models and of the initial spread index, this new incorporation has allowed to extend the use of the program from the prevention until the forest fires extinction activities.