Mediterranean Europe context
Over thousands of years, the landscapes of Mediterranean Europe were shaped by traditional land management practices, such as grazing, using forests as a source of many different types of resources, and contributing to the management of a scattered mosaic of agricultural lands (Chergui et al. 2018). However, in relatively recent years, rural abandonment and depopulation during the industrialization period led to a decrease in these landscape management practices, with consequent reforestation, fuel loading, and increase in fire intensity (Vega-Garcia and Chuvieco 2006; Pausas and Fernández-Muñoz 2011). All together, this has created more complex scenarios for fire management (Miralles et al. 2010; Lahaye et al. 2018). Until 20 years ago, thanks to the professionalization of fire services, the operational capacity to fight and control wildfires was successful in suppressing most wildfire emergencies. Only a few extreme fires escaped, leading to the fire suppression paradox, also known as the firefighting trap (Silva et al. 2010; Collins et al. 2013). As fuel accumulated on the landscape, fires that overwhelmed the extinction capacity got larger, faster, hotter, and spread closer to wildland–urban interfaces (WUI; Costa et al. 2011; Cardil and Molina 2015; Diakakis et al. 2016; Modugno et al. 2016).
Currently, Mediterranean Europe is highly populated with 200 million people living in France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, and with peak densities of 750 000 inhabitants km−2 during summer (San-Miguel-Ayanz et al. 2013). There are two main challenges that Europe is preparing to address in the next years. First, the risk of more devastating WUI fires, following those in Portugal in 2017 and Greece in 2018. Second, wildfires in the Atlantic, central, and northern European regions with unprecedented fire behaviors (San-Miguel-Ayanz et al. 2018).
The fear of not being able to control devastating fires is increasing among fire services. Over time, the operational capacity of fire services has been overwhelmed by extreme fire behaviors in repeated events (Molina-Terrén et al. 2019). The response has always been an increase in efforts, causing stress and reactive approaches to the situation (CTI 2017, 2018; Palaiologou et al. 2018). Increasingly, emergency management based on large amounts of resources has been the expensive answer under the firefighting trap.
Reactive strategies
The decision-making process in Mediterranean Europe, as in other parts of the world, has evolved according to the knowledge and means available to respond to wildfire events, moving into defensive strategies (Nasiatka 2003; 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission 2010). Fire services have focused on defending against predictable, measurable, and known risks (Desmond 2011). Thus, risk management that leads decision-making focuses on protecting lives, property, and human values, following these four assumptions: (1) that safety procedures are defined based on predictable risks; (2) that focus on suppressing flames is based on estimated fire potentials to minimize the known risks (i.e., higher value and higher probability); (3) that information management focuses on increasing the information of known risks in an intelligence cell, gathering real-time information and anticipating fire behavior to maintain the initiative over the fire; and (4) that command structures focus on a tight control of large quantities of resources, prioritizing the gathering of information to make decisions.
This approach has been successful to suppress wildfires and protect citizens and firefighters in those scenarios that are certain and predictable. If the fire intensity is within the capacity of control of emergency services and the weather forecast does not show any uncertainties, the main challenges for the firefighters will be to control the perimeter of the fire (in wildfires of the first generation) or the speed of the fire head (in wildfires of the second generation). Under those circumstances, risks arise from known and routine factors—emergencies can get complex, yet they are certain and known. Risk becomes predictable, and procedures and operational techniques work. This approach has also consistently failed when facing uncertain and dynamic scenarios. If all efforts focus on the known risks instead of what is increasingly uncertain, more resources are needed to face new emerging risks. Then information is scarce, resources do not have time to efficiently respond where they are needed, and fire services collapse. Under a scenario in which uncertainty is increasing, fire services can no longer protect lives and properties.
Examples of such collapses can be found everywhere around the world. One example is the large wildfires affecting WUIs (Butler 1974; Caballero et al. 2007; BRP 2008; Calkin et al. 2014). Due to values at immediate risk (i.e., lives, properties, environment), most decisions focus on defending particular lives and assets that are at risk at that particular moment.
Resources are allocated to face fire behaviors that overwhelm their capacity. These resources often don’t have any relevant impact on the development of the emergency.
Resources protecting assets that are at risk during the emergency are not stopping wildfire spread. The consequences of subsequent fire spread are more uncertain; as fire grows freely, it involves more and more assets requiring protection, endangering more and more assets.
While the fire grows (e.g., in dimension, intensity, potential), the number of values at immediate risk increases faster than the capacity of gathering centralized information and responding to the fire: the information is always late.
Tactics become reactive and defensive, with focus on responding to the most urgent risks. But these tactics do not increase the capacity of solving the emergency. Consequently, the number of threatened assets increases with time.
The emergency absorbs a high number of resources, leaving emergency services without capacity to respond to any other emergency.
Another example is large wildfires that are highly dynamic, involving cold fronts passing through, with turbulent winds interacting with the orography and creating large convective plumes, pirocumulus, etc. (Putnam 1995; Nasiatka 2003; CTI 2017, 2018). Repeatedly, safety procedures and operations fail to respond to those unpredictable situations. Uncertain risks emerge, threatening lives and properties, and fire services lose the initiative over the emergency and become reactive.
There has been a visible shift of the fire service culture, moving from a proactive attack (initial mission and vision) to a more defensive approach based on assets at risk that need protection. This shift has been driven by an increase of uncertain situations caused by natural hazards, together with some social factors such as the changes in the relationship between the urban society and the wildlands.
Uncertainty arises as fire suppression focuses only on the known and measurable risks. The known risk is only one small part of the uncertainty that emerges in complex and dynamic scenarios (Fig. 1). If uncertainty is ignored in these scenarios, then unexpected risks emerge. Fire services then lose the initiative over the resolution of the emergency due to failures of the safety procedures and methodologies and the collapse of the fire suppression agencies. The results are unsafe situations for firefighters and citizens. This approach, built under pressure and fear, persists today, aggravated by climate change impacts on an increasingly urbanized society. Nevertheless, there is momentum to dedicate collective efforts to develop a creative decision-making process that considers social and natural values for current and future societies and landscapes.
Objectives
Traditionally, the culture of priorities for wildfire emergency management has been based on civil protection values at-risk: people, property, and environment. This is driving most of the emergency management systems today, but is increasing the firefighting trap that moves emergency management into a defensive-only approach.
Emergency management systems based on defensive strategies struggle with rapid changes, dynamic scenarios, and simultaneous emergencies generated by extreme wildfire behaviors (e.g., Chile in 2017, California in 2017 and 2018, and Portugal in 2017). Collaborative science is fundamental to facing those challenges; however, while science is progressing to provide clear solutions, firefighters continue to respond to those wildfires year after year. To avoid collapse in the capacity to resolve emergencies, there is the need to develop a decision-making process that creates certainty and safety. Identifying decision traps and creative ways to prevent these traps will ensure safer working environments for firefighters during dynamic and complex situations.
In this context, detecting sources of uncertainty in fire management scenarios should unquestionably be part of the decision-making process, but bringing values such as future landscape and resilience into the decision-making equation is equally important. The objective of this paper is to describe the design and development of an experience-based methodological approach that is already operational in Mediterranean Europe. This methodology helps fire services to manage uncertainty during wildfire suppression, while creating certainty and safety, and moving away from the firefighting trap. The methods proposed do not require computational times that exceed the time available to make decisions during an emergency. They also help to maximize the positive impact of fire management for today’s society and future generations. The methods are demonstrated in two real study cases with different levels of complexity.
The approach used is proven to be a useful support tool, first, for the implementation of an integrated fire management approach (Castellnou et al. 2010), and second, to enable local communities to be part of the solution by being realistic about expectations of emergency management.