Funded by EU Civil Protection Mechanism, SAILOR (Cross Border Risk Assessment and Action Plan in Georgia-Azerbaijan) aims to conduct a forest fire risk assessment in the cross-border area between Georgia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus with the participation of national civil defense authorities from both countries.
SAILOR thus also contributes to enriching what has been achieved under the European program Prevention, Preparedness and Response to natural and man-made disasters in Eastern Partnership countries – phase 3 (PPRD East 3), which started in 2020.
How does the project work?
Coordinated by the University of Western Macedonia, the project aims to strengthen forest fire management by acting both through risk assessment and by implementing plans for risk mitigation and management, including by updating procedures currently in use in the Georgia-Azerbaijan border area. This will also involve the implementation of a investment plan, training activities, and full activation of the bilateral agreement between Georgia and Azerbaijan to ensure the full effectiveness of fire risk assessment.
The expected duration of SAILOR is two years (January 2023 – December 2024).
What are the expected results?
- Risk assessment on forest fires risk at the border areas.
- Action and Management Plans to reduce risk and optimise risk management.
- Revision of risk assessment as well as of the management and action plans
What does CIMA Research Foundation do?
Within the scope of the project, CIMA Research Foundation is responsible for the work package “Joint Forest Fires Risk Assessment at Cross Border Area”. More specifically, we will compute forest fires static risk maps in the project area leveraging on the hazard and susceptibility maps produced in the framework of the PPRD EAST 3 project. This will be done on the basis of exposed assets, and their vulnerability to forest fires (identified within PPRD EAST 3 and other relevant actions in the project area). Moreover, we will identify the threats posed by climate change by elaborating future forest fire hazard scenarios based on climate projections (i.e. Forecasts on future distribution of Koppen climatic classes, projections for rainfall and temperatures…).
CIMA Research Foundation will also provide open hardware mobile weather stations and UAVs (unmanned air vehicles) for increasing the environmental awareness in the field of operation during forest fires events. We will also develop ad hoc training on the job activities for local experts on the use of the forest fire spread simulator PROPAGATOR and foresting operational use of UAVs in risk assessment, damage assessment, planning and response phases.
