The satellite-based products for supporting prevention and recovery of forest fires in PREFER

The PREFER FP7 project aims at responding to major fire prevention needs in Southern Europe. The Mediterranean area is systematically affected by uncontrolled forest fires with large impact on ecosystems, soil erosion, slope instability, desertification trends, and local economies as a whole, with a negative mid-to-long term prospect because of expected climate change. In this scenario, the need to improve the information and the intelligence support to forest fire prevention is widely recognized to be relevant. Fire prevention is still the most cost-effective strategy when compared to fire-fighting and extinguishing that are costly, local, and triggered only in response to already ongoing crises. The PREFER project intends to contribute to responding to such a pragmatic need of Southern Europe’s forests by: 1) providing timely multi-scale and multi-payload information products based on exploitation of all available spaceborne sensors; 2) offering a portfolio of EO products focused both on Pre-crisis and Post-crisis forest fire emergency cycle in the EU Mediterranean area; 3) preparing the exploitation of new spaceborne sensors available by 2020 (e.g.: Sentinels) and 4) contributing to the definition of user requirements for the new EO missions.
The paper is devoted to illustrate some of the more significant and innovative products developed by the project.