Accuracy assessment of a mediterranean fuel-type map for wildland fire management at national scale: the cases of greece and portugal

Abstract

Classification and mapping of wildland fuel is one of the most important factors that should be taken into consideration for wildland fire prevention and planning. In this paper we demonstrate the accuracy assessment of “ArcFUEL” project which has delivered a complete, up-to-date, methodology for Fuel Classification Mapping (FCM on a Web-Geodatabase) based on “readily available” data, harmonized, accessible & interoperable according to INSPIRE principles, for the Mediterranean Region. The fuel layer has been evaluated in terms of spatial and thematic thematic accuracy by employing an extensive field campaign in Portugal and Greece and standard photointerpretation procedures. For Greece, the overall accuracy was found to be 80.59 % , while the Kappa value was 0.74. For Portugal the overall accuracy was found to be 67% and the Kappa value was 0.63.The spatial fuel maps is an end-product essential for computing spatial fuel hazard, fire risk and simulation, fire growth and intensity and post fire effects across a landscape at national and regional scale.