Potential Direct Protection Forests of Italy (PAI-Based)

This dataset provides a first openly available, national-scale mapping of potential direct protection forests in Italy, based on the most recent datasets, and derived from the intersection of the 2024 national mosaic of gravitational natural hazards from the Hydrogeological Planning and Management Plans (Piani per l’Assetto Idrogeologico – PAI; ISPRA Report 415/2025) and the Forest Map of Italy (CFI2020). In line with the definition of protection forests in the Italian Consolidated Law on Forests (TUFF), the dataset identifies forest areas with a potential role in mitigating hazards such as landslides, rockfalls, and avalanches. Released as an open-data GeoPackage, it represents an initial, harmonized framework to support further methodological development and regional adaptation, linking forest management, hazard assessment, and spatial planning.