article · Natural Hazards
Forest fires present a major environmental hazard in south-western France, driven by fuel accumulation, climate extremes, and human activity. A high-resolution forest fire vulnerability map was created for the Gironde department by combining remote sensing, geographic information systems, and the analytical hierarchy process. The framework integrated twelve conditioning factors covering vegetation, fuel types, climate, topography, and human influence. Model validation using 699 historical active fire points demonstrated robust predictive capability, achieving a receiver operating characteristic area under the curve of 0.721 and a success rate curve of 0.86. Notably, 87 percent of observed fire ignitions coincided with areas classified as high or very high vulnerability. The south-western section of Gironde exhibited the greatest vulnerability, largely owing to dense maritime pine forests, low vegetation moisture, and proximity to human infrastructure. The resulting spatial tool offers direct support for fire prevention, targeted fuel reduction, and risk mitigation planning.
Escalating climate extremes and human encroachment increase the frequency and severity of destructive wildfires. High-resolution spatial vulnerability mapping enables civil protection agencies and municipal authorities to anticipate fire risks more accurately. By pinpointing areas facing the highest danger, planners can allocate emergency resources efficiently, establish targeted fuel management zones, and improve land-use strategies to protect vulnerable communities and ecosystems.
The methodology functions as an applied decision-support tool ready for spatial planning, early warning, and fuel management operations. Prospective users include forestry managers, regional land-use planners, emergency response agencies, and geospatial risk-analytics providers. Because the framework has been successfully validated against historical satellite fire detections, it appears to be an applied and tested system capable of operational deployment or adaptation to other fire-prone landscapes.
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Abstract Forest fires pose a significant environmental hazard in southwestern France, where increasing fuel accumulation, human activities, and climatic extremes have intensified fire occurrences in recent decades. This study developed a high-resolution forest fire vulnerability map for the Gironde department by integrating remote sensing, GIS-based modeling, and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). A comprehensive geodatabase comprising twelve conditioning factors related to vegetation and fuel characteristics(e.g., forest fuel type and land cover), climate and weather variability, topographic constraints, and human influence was developed to support the vulnerability assessment. A 12 × 12 AHP pairwise comparison matrix generated a consistent weighting scheme (CR = 0.046), and the resulting criteria weights were applied through a weighted sum model to derive the forest fire vulnerability index (FFVI). A key contribution of this study is the integration of multi-source geospatial data with a validated multi-criteria decision-making framework to produce a high-resolution forest fire vulnerability assessment, an approach not previously applied to the Gironde region. The model demonstrated strong predictive performance when validated using 699 active fire detection points obtained from the fire information for resource management system (FIRMS). The ROC analysis produced an AUC of 0.721, indicating good discriminatory performance, and 87% of fire ignitions fell into the high and very high vulnerability groups. Additionally, the success rate curve (SRC) yielded an AUC of 0.86, confirming excellent model performance. Spatial analysis indicated that southwestern Gironde exhibited the highest forest fire vulnerability because of its extensive maritime pine forests, low vegetation moisture, and proximity to anthropogenic features. The resulting vulnerability map provides a practical decision-support tool for strategic fire prevention, targeted fuel management, land-use planning, risk mitigation, and early warning.
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DOI: 10.1007/s11069-026-08402-4
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