Author(s):
Barbosa, Bruno ; Oliveira, Sandra ; Caetano, Mário ; Rocha, Jorge
Date: 2024
Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/171514
Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
Project/scholarship:
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/FCT/6817 - DCRRNI ID/UIDB%2F04152%2F2020/PT;
Subject(s): Geographic information system – GIS; Urban expansion; Vegetation patterns; Environmental Engineering; Waste Management and Disposal; Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law; SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
Description
Barbosa, B., Oliveira, S., Caetano, M., & Rocha, J. (2024). Mapping the wildland-urban interface at municipal level for wildfire exposure analysis in mainland Portugal. Journal of Environmental Management, 368, 1-11. Article 122098. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.122098 --- %ABS3% --- B.B. thanks Bar-Massada for sending the mapping of wildland-urban interface in Europe and DGT for providing the combustible materials map This work was funded by national funds through FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., under the framework of the project “Change4Fire –Modelling landcover and climatic changes for wildfire hazard assessment in future scenarios” [2022.05015.PTDC, https://doi.org/10.54499/2022.05015.PTDC], by the Research Unit UIDB/00295/2020 and UIDP/00295/2020, and UIDB/04152/2020 —Centro de Investigação em Gestão de Informação (MagIC). B. B. was supported by the Ph.D. fellowship funded by FCT [2022.12095.BD]. S. O. was funded by FCT through a CEEC contract [2020.03873.CEECIND]. ---%ABS3%
The Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), where vegetation and built-up structures intermingle, encompasses a variety of territorial elements that interact spatially, being variable both in space and time. Mapping the WUI at finer scales is paramount to assess wildfire exposure and define tailored mitigation strategies. Our aim was to develop a semi-automated method to map the WUI at municipal level, leveraging recent advances in data and technology. We tested the procedure in four municipalities of mainland Portugal with different fire history, biophysical conditions, and sociodemographic contexts. We considered WUI as either intermix or interface. Our approach integrates both building location data and high-resolution vegetation maps, to calculate the density of buildings and forest cover proportion within different circular moving window sizes. Within each radius, we evaluated the total area and spatial distribution of the WUI types, as well as the number of buildings within WUI and within the fire perimeters recorded between the years 2000 and 2022 and analysed the differences between municipalities. We then compared the mapped WUI with previous WUI mappings for mainland Portugal, to identify common spots and potential spatial divergences. We found that the area mapped as WUI within all four municipalities ranged from about 400 km2 to 1135 km2 depending on the radius size. A distinct distribution for each type of WUI was observed as the radius size increased: the intermix WUI showed a tendency to increase, and the interface WUI increased only between the radius of 100 and 200 m, decreasing gradually in subsequent radii. Between 39.4% and 45.5% of the nearly 200,000 buildings in the study areas were within WUI, depending on radius size and a total of 5436 buildings were within the historic fire perimeter. Although the comparison with other maps showed fair agreement, due to differences in data and methodology, common areas mapped as WUI were found, which suggests that these areas should receive greater attention from decision-makers regarding fire management strategies, since their classification as WUI remains consistent across different methodologies.
