Fire risk: a technical seminar on Risico held at the Department

A technical seminar on the previsional system for potential fire dangerousness was held today at the Civil Protection Department. Since 2003 the Department is equipped with the Ris.i.co- Fire risk and coordination, a previsional model for the evaluation of fire triggering and spreading conditions, throughout the country.

The previsional system Ris.i.co – created by the Competence Centre Cima Foundation in concert with the Department – allows to determinate and predict possible fires with mathematical models. Fire triggering and spreading conditions bulletins are issued daily, and identify three levels of dangerousness (low – medium – high) for each province, evaluating average decrees of fire triggering likelihood over the next 24 hours and the tendency for the next 48. The Official Gazette will be published with a new directive that defines procedures for bulleting issue.

The Department shares Ris.i.co. information with the Regions with the objective of promoting the elaboration of regional bulletins, to modulate alert levels to local structures, active in fire fighting. The Ris.i.co model is getting more established, after Lebanon and Albania adopted it.

Nicola Dell’Acqua, Director of the Hydrogeological and man-made risks Office of the Department and Franco Siccardi, President of Cima Foundation, opened the works and underlined the operating technical support offered by Ris.i.co to the general activities of the Department and especially to the National fire-fighting fleet. Massimiliano Severino of the Department and Paolo Fiorucci of Cima Foundation followed, showing characteristics and objectives of wood fire prevision and prevention activities and principles and models regulating the Ris.i.co system. Dario Negro and Andrea Gollini of the Department made their inteventions in the afternoon, describing how the system can work at operating level.

The seminar brought together some general guidelines for wood fire risk management: prevision as a prevention tool, danger awareness growth, resources optimization for reducing cost of fire extinguishing operations, previsional models sharing in the Peripheral Functional Centres through DEWETRA system (on which Ris.i.co.operates).

Issues came up in the margin of the seminar regarding current and future reduction of necessary man and means for wood fire risk prevision, prevention and efficiency. What emerged was the need to keep on developing and updating platforms similar to Ris.i.co.