Principles for Firefighting Assets Allocation. Integrating National and Regional Forest Fires Logs into the Vulnerability Analysis

Italian forest fire fighting assets include personnel, equipment, vehicles, helicopters and airplanes. The national resources are mainly represented by air-tankers and helicopters, deployed by the Unified Air Operations Center (COAU) upon regional request. Each Region is responsible to define its forest fire fighting response plan and establish a Permanent Unified Operations Command (SOUP), coordinating the intervention of aerial and ground firefighting assets. Each Region may establish an agreement with the Regional Firefighter’s Brigade to deploy an additional dedicated contingent of firefighters and vehicles during the forest fire campaign. Given this regulatory framework, it is difficult to get a comprehensive view of the aerial and ground forces deployed to fight forest fires integrated by the GIS mapping of their localizations and burned areas. This study is focused on the forest fire events occurred in the Lazio region, Italy, in the years 2019–2022. This integrated approach allows to conduct a systematic analysis of the conditions of use of the aerial and ground forces and provides a sound basis for further analysis, being the monitoring of the seasonal trends or the definition of firefighting asset allocations. Most of the forest fires recorded in the Lazio region is related to the human activity and any forest fire risk assessment should include their localization and frequency of occurrence.