Post-wildfire damage assessment in Portbou, Spain (2023-08-17)

Activation date: 2023-08-17
Event type: Other

Activation reason:
This CEMS Risk and Recovery Standard activation has been requested to provide damage delineation and grading product over the municipality of Portbou, in the region of Girona (Spain), which was hit by a forest fire on 04th August 2023, started around 14:30 (UTC).According to the news, firefighters from Spain's northeastern region of Catalonia teamed up with French colleagues as the blaze ravaged some 435 hectares (1,100 acres) of land, with an estimated 2,500 hectares threatened.The goal of the activation is to provide the wildfire wildfire damage delineation and grading product and at supporting the damage assessment.The P07-Wildfire delineation and grading product shows the delineation of the burnt area and the associated level of damage as derived from post-event optical VHR images. The analysis resulted in 500.04 ha burnt, of which 412.59 ha only slightly damaged, 81.67 moderately damaged, 5.72 ha highly damaged, and 0.06 ha destroyed.The P14-Impact assessment analysis on assets and population provides an asset and population impact assessment analysis following the fire in Portbou. The analysis was carried out on the basis of reference datasets and LULC information. The main outputs of this product were the general statistics on the assets and population affected by the event, resulting from the spatial intersection between the event and the reference strata. The summary statistics are presented in tabular form. In terms of area, the greatest damage was suffered by shrubland vegetation (372.57 hectares) and coniferous copse (78.91 hectares).