The development of decision support systems for fire risk and danger maps

Fire management includes parts such as pre-fire planning, detection and monitoring, fire suppression, and post-fire evaluation. One of the most important issues in pre-fire planning is to determine fire risk and danger in advance and to take the necessary precautions for sensitive areas. In this respect, preparation of fire risk and danger maps is an important step in preventing fire disasters and damages. In this study, conceptual design, system design, system software (interface and coding) and test stages have been followed in the development of the decision support system to be used in the preparation of fire risk and danger maps. With the created decision support system, maps such as stand, contour, road, stream and settlement area were evaluated and fire risk and danger maps were created on the basis of planning unit, state forest enterprise or regional directorate. For this purpose, a dynamic module (Add-in) has been created in GIS environment (ArcGIS) in order to accelerate the decision support mechanism in creating fire risk and danger maps. The sample application of this system was carried out in the areas of Kahramanmaraş Forest Regional Directorate, Dörtyol State Forest Enterprise (SFE). According to the results of the study, 5.1% (1,098.6 ha) of the total forest area of Dörtyol SFE was very low, 10.1% (2,117.5 ha) low, 22.5% (4,735.7 ha) medium, 12.5% (2.648.6 ha) high and 49.8% (10.539.9 ha) very high in terms of forest fire risk. In terms of fire danger, 74.8% (15.007.1 ha) of the total forest area was very low, 5.3% (1.070.9 ha) low, 10.4% (2.087.8 ha) medium, 8.5% (1.720.9 ha) high and 1.0% (154.9 ha) in very high fire danger class. The results of this study will make an important contribution to the scientific knowledge and especially to the practitioners within the scope of forest fire fighting activities.