Wildfire and heat stress risk: mapping as a tool to improve evidence-based decision making for concurrent hazards

Heat and forest fires are considered highly correlated hazards in summer time as extreme temperatures play a key role in driving their occurrences. This commonality influences how civil protection and local responders deploy resources on the ground with a potential underestimation of resulting impacts as population is likely to be less resilient when exposed to multiple hazards. A simple methodology to identify areas prone to concurrent hazards, namely heat stress and fire danger, will be presented. A combined heatwave and forest fire event that severely affected Europe in June 2017 will be used to demonstrate the applicability of presented methodology to past and future events by employing climate reanalysis and medium-range weather forecasts, respectively.

Spatial layers mapping the combined heat-wildfire danger will be illustrated. Their use will be discussed in the context of a multi-hazard early warning system, disaster risk reduction and emergency response management.