LAND ZONING BASED ON FIRE HISTORY

An approach to land zoning for fire planning purposes through classifi cation of geographical units referred to as Basic Units - in a multiva riate context is proposed. The method, developed for large areas, empl oys a few statistics computed from historical fire data, that were sel ected with the aim of depicting a ''fire history profile'' of each Bas ic Unit. The statistics were chosen in order to describe different asp ects, such as fire frequency, fire continuity, average and maximum are a burned and average area spread rate of fires. Using the computed sta tistics as variables, the Basic Units can be aggregated with cluster a nalysis techniques and classes can be defined, each class of Basic Uni ts representing a land zone with a specific mean fire history profile. Fire management decisions can be tailored according to the properties of clusters. The method was successfully applied for supporting fire management plans in two Regions of Northern Italy, where the Basic Uni ts were chosen with an administrative criterion.