A dataset to support wildland fire and fuel management in Greece created with stochastic wildfire simulations
Authors/Creators
- 1. Department of Geography
-
2.
University of the Aegean
-
3.
Agricultural University of Athens
-
4.
National Observatory of Athens
Contributors
Data curator:
Project member:
Research group:
Researcher (7):
et al. Show all 12 contributors
Data curator:
Project leader:
Project member:
Related person:
Research group:
-
1.
University of the Aegean
-
2.
University of Thessaly
-
3.
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
- 4. Department of Geography and Land Management, University of Zaragoza
- 5. National Observatory of Athens, Institute for Environmental Research and Sustainable Development
-
6.
National Observatory of Athens
-
7.
Universitat de Lleida
- 8. Technosylva
-
9.
Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia
- 10. Missoula Fire Lab
Description
The potential spread and intensity of wildfires can be estimated with fire modelling simulators that produce valuable datasets that can be used during the prevention and suppression stages from fire management agencies. In the absence of observational data for all potential ignition sires, since a fire has not yet occurred or burned many decades ago, fire behavior algorithms such as the Minimum Travel Time incorporated in the FSim simulator can be used to reveal these hidden fire patterns and trajectories. FSim is widely used in the USA for that purpose and its outputs i.e., fire perimeters, ignition locations, fire intensity and burn probability are used in numerous assessments and applications, from fireshed delineation and community protection planning to exposure calculations of wildfire risk by the Reinsurance industry. However, no country-scale application exists for Europe, due to the previous lack of essential model input data at an adequate spatial resolution (~100 m), specifically fuel models, canopy base height and canopy bulk density. Fuel models were corrected where it was considered necessary to capture site specific conditions obtained from in-situ knowledge of the different Greek areas by the authors. The EU H2020 funded project “FIRE-RES” filled that gap and produced the necessary input dataset at a pan-European level, enabling the first large scale stochastic fire behavior modelling application for Greece. The methods can be replicated and the datasets produced and presented in this work can be produced for every continental EU country. After retrieving the necessary spatial datasets from on-line open access repositories, we assembled them to create a landscape file. Greece was divided into 23 Pyromes that are regions with similar vegetation, climate and fire behavior. Then, weather patterns were summarized in a format compatible with FSim using hourly data of air temperature, dewpoint temperature, incident solar radiation, precipitation, and northward and eastward wind components for the years 2000-2021 from the state-of-the-art global reanalysis dataset ERA5-Land. Ignition locations were distributed across each Pyrome using an ignition probability grid, ensuring that we simulated enough fires so that each burnable pixel of the landscape experiences at least one event. Simulations were validated by comparing the historic fire size distribution of each Pyrome with the simulated one. The dataset presented in the article is at country scale and includes the burn probability and conditional flame length rasters at 100 m spatial resolution, and the 3.65 million fire perimeters and ignition locations in vector format. In addition, we provide those input datasets that are not available in other repositories, specifically the modified fuel models and the ignition probability rasters. The data provided in this article offers a valuable resource for fire management and civil protection agencies and enables them to understand the fire size potential of each area and the expected burning intensity. In addition, metanalyses of fire perimeters by intersecting them with settlement boundary polygons can provide their exposure profile and rank them to prioritize fuel treatment and community protection plans. Risk profiles may also be produced by linking exposure with expected fire intensity, even at building level, providing useful datasets for insurance purposes and spatial planning.
Technical info
Data Usage and Deployment
This guide intends to describe how the provided datasets can be used within the environment of ArcGIS version 10.4, although the same rules and guidelines apply for usage in the QGIS and ArcGIS Pro environment. In the ZENODO data repository (accessed at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17579289), end users can find four compressed files. Use Winrar, Winzip or the Windows embedded decompression tools to open the files and decompress the included filed.
The file titled “FSim_Dataset_Greece_LYR_files_ARCGIS_QGIS_ARCGISPRO.rar” contains .lyr files that are an ArcGIS file type that is a container that stores the visualization and metadata properties for a single map layer, such as symbology, labeling, and transparency. It does not contain the actual geographic data itself but acts as a "pointer" to the source data (like a shapefile or a raster). These files can be used withing the ArcGIS environment to assign the proper colors and classes, as portrayed on the maps of the paper. Layer files are available only for raster type datasets. In addition, we provide the layer files that hold the symbology and classes at the format of .qml, for use in QGIS, and .lyrx for use in ArcGIS Pro.
The file titled “Metadata.rar” contains all the individual .xml files holding information about the metadata of each dataset, created with the ISO 19139 XML format. The Geodatabase_metadata.xml contains the metadata of the File Geodatabase. The FSim_Geodatabase_Schema_Report is the schema report of the File Geodatabase, created with ArcGIS Pro 3.5 in four readable versions (Excel, JSON, PDF, and HTML). They can be directly opened with any relevant software that supports each file type, and users can navigate to the different sections of metadata information for all datasets included in the File Geodatabase.
The file titled “FSim_Dataset_Greece_raw_files.rar” contains all datasets in file formats that are not part of a File Geodatabase, like ESRI shapefiles (.shp) and ERDAS IMAGINE raster filed (.img), intended for use in GIS software that are not owned by the ESRI (like the QGIS). Each dataset contained in the File Geodatabase can be found in this compressed file with the same name, as reported in the paper. Below the image shows how the data in folder appear when viewed inside ArcCatalog.
The file titled “FSim_Dataset_Greece.gdb.rar” contains the File Geodatabase, created with ArcGIS version 10.4. The File Geodatabase has all the datasets, including their accompanying metadata.
This File Geodatabase can be opened with any version of ArcGIS or ArcGIS Pro. To Open ESRI File (gdb) using GDAL (Geospatial Data Abstraction Library) follow these steps:
- Install GDAL: If you don’t have GDAL installed on your system, download and install it from the official website (https://gdal.org/download.html). Make sure to get the version that supports the OpenFileGDB driver.
- Open a command prompt or terminal window: Launch the command prompt (Windows) or terminal (macOS/Linux).
- Use ogrinfo: To list the layers available in the gdb file, use the ogrinfo command followed by the path to the gdb folder. For example:
ogrinfo path/to/your/geodatabase.gdb
Replace path/to/your/geodatabase.gdb with the actual path to your gdb file. This command will display information about the layers in the geodatabase.
- Access specific layers: To access a specific layer within the gdb, you can use the ogr2ogr command to convert the layer to another format, such as a shapefile, GeoJSON, or CSV. For example, to convert a layer named “example_layer” to a shapefile, use:
ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" output_shapefile.shp path/to/your/geodatabase.gdb example_layer
Replace output_shapefile.shp with the desired name for the output shapefile, and path/to/your/geodatabase.gdb with the actual path to your gdb file. This command will convert the “example_layer” to a shapefile format.
To open the File Geodatabase in QGIS, follow these steps:
1. Open QGIS: Launch your QGIS application to begin the import process.
2. Access Data Source Manager: Click on the Data Source Manager button in the toolbar.
3. Select Directory: In the Data Source Manager window, click on the Directory tab. Choose Open File GDB as the source type.
4. Browse to the .gdb Folder: Click the Browse button and navigate to the unzipped .gdb folder. Select the folder and click Add.
5. Adding Layers: After adding the folder, you will see the layers contained within the geodatabase. Click Close to finish the process.
An example of how the Metadata appear when viewed through ArcCatalog is provided in the figure below:
Open the datasets in ArcGIS version 10.4 and use the .lyr files
First, open the ArcGIS, navigate to the decompress folder of the File Geodatabase after pressing “Add Data”, and select a dataset (in this case, the Burn Probability raster).
Then, double click on the Burn_Prob layer in the Table of Contents, move to Symbology, select “Classified” since all layers have a classified symbology, and press the open button, as shown below:
Then, press again the open folder button, and select the .lyr file for the dataset (in this case, Burn_Prob.lyr).
Then press twice “OK” and the dataset will be assigned with the predefined Color Ramp and classes. This process is the same when using .img raster files.
Open the datasets in ArcGIS Pro version 3.5 and use the .lyrx files
To open a raster layer in ArcGIS Pro version 3.5, start by inserting the selected raster layer, in our case, the Burn Probability raster layer. Right click on the layer and select “Symbology”. Then, click on the tab at the right and select "Import from layer file”. Then proceed by selecting the accompanying .lyrx file and the dataset will be visualized with the predefined color ramp and classes.
Open the datasets in QGIS version 3.36 and use the .qml files
To open a raster layer in QGIS version 3.36, start by inserting the selected raster layer, in our case, the Burn Probability raster layer.
Then, double click on the layer and the Layer Properties window will open. Navigate to “Symbology” and at the bottom, go to “Style” and select “Load Style”. There, provide the accompanying .qml file and click on “Load Style”.
Files
Additional details
Funding
Dates
- Available
-
2025-11-11
Software
References
- Palaiologou, P., Kalabokidis, K., Day, M. A., Ager, A. A., Galatsidas, S., & Papalampros, L., 2022. Modelling fire behavior to assess community exposure in Europe: combining open data and geospatial analysis. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 11(3), 198.
- Kutchartt, E., González-Olabarria, J.R., Aquilué, N., Garcia-Gonzalo, J., Trasobares, A., Botequim, B., Hauglin, M., Palaiologou, P., Vassilev, V., Cardil, A., Navarrete, M.Á., Orazio, C., Pirotti, F. Pan-European fuel map server: an open-geodata portal for supporting fire risk assessment, Geomatica (2024) 100036.
- Palaiologou, P., Kalabokidis, K. and Vasilakos, C., 2022. A geographical analysis of wildfire fuel characteristics by cover type in Greece. In Proceedings of "2nd AGROECOINFO", 30 June to 2 July 2022, Volos, Greece.
- Finney, M.A., McHugh, C.W., Grenfell, I.C., Riley, K.L. and Short, K.C., 2011. A simulation of probabilistic wildfire risk components for the continental United States. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, 25(7), pp.973-1000.
- Kalabokidis, K., Ager, A., Finney, M., Athanasis, N., Palaiologou, P. and Vasilakos, C., 2016. AEGIS: a wildfire prevention and management information system. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 16(3), pp.643-661.