This post is
not actually going to be about the third day of my Sardegnian experience
because I spent it on holiday; I had a wonderful beach day in La Caletta’s beach and a wonderful party
night in a great concert. That’s not interesting for you, so I will speak about
Dr. Delogu’s recently released book (“Dalla
parte del fuoco”) and about how CFVA (by the hand of Dr. Delogu and some
others) has implemented the use of forecasts, software, mapping and many
new-tech tools.
“Dalla parte del fuoco” is written
employing technical language, regarding complex terms, but in an
easy-to-understand way. I mean, by reading it you’ll be able to relate many of
those theories we know by the hand of famous scientists (Prof. Domingo M.
Molina, Dr. Juli G. Pausas, Prof. Vittorio Leone, Ronald L. Myers, Jon Keeley,
Prof. Leda Kobziar et al.) to Sardegna’s environment. You will understand how
all that stuff is developing in Sardegnian ecosystems.
Another thing
that makes it worthwhile is that Dr. Delogu includes many quotes of many of
those papers I referred on the previous paragraph: he tells you what they said and how is it happening in
Sardegna. That is amazing because it allows you both to remember the theory and
to improve your knowledge (by applying it to different realities –forestry
environments). Moreover, the book is perfectly structured: either you are used
to fire stuff (at this level) or not, Dr. Delogu will guide you chapter by
chapter, so as you are able to understand every single word he writes. That’s
great, for the reason that each of us we’re specialized in different things
(there are only a few who know perfectly everything).
Finally,
format is also very good; it is easy to read, with nice letter and many charts,
diagrams and pictures useful to better understand information. Language,
Italian, is not a problem (at least for Spanish readers); absolutely
understandable. And it prices the ridiculous amount of 16EUR, which nothing is
compared with the great time you are going to have by reading it.
You
can order it right here:
I am still on
sixth chapter so there are still over a hundred pages to go; but I want to
share with you some quotes from the book that I’ve particularly liked and
enjoyed.
Quote 1:
<<[author is referring to GAUF] Si
tratta di unità speciali recentemente istituite per l’attacco indiretto all’incendio
con l’uso del fuoco di soppressione (fuoco tattico e controfuoco), per la
preparazione di fuochi prescritti finalizzati alla prevenzione dei grandi
incendi di interfaccia, per l’analisi degli incendi storici al fine di
“apprendere lezioni” ed evitari errori di tattica che purtroppo in tanto
occasioni sono stati causa di gravi incidenti>>
Well, I don’t
know what to say. Amazing, wonderful, impressive, great… I mean, those units,
born in 2008, are kind of the compendium of all good managing practices in one
tactical team: PRESCRIBED FIRE as a prevention tool and as an ecosystem
management tool, HIGH RELIABILITY ORGANIZATIONS’ principles, TECHNOLOGY
applications and both FIRE ANALYSIS and FIRE as a suppression tool. Awesome! And, believe
me, I saw those units working and they’re great.
Quote 2:
<<Per evitarne gli effetti più
devastanti occorrerà adottare, nella gestione forestale, tutte le azioni e le
strategie necessarie non allo spegnimento delle fiamme ma soprattutto alla
prevenzione, avviando il bosco alla “resilienza”>>.
He hit the
spot! That’s what we all know (if not, we should); I think he is sending a message
to some old-fashioned guys.
That is what
I call ‘Forestry’s future formula’ (F3 by Merenciano):
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Quote 3: <<Cosa
direste se qualcuno vi chiedesse di partecipare ad una campagna di opinione
segnata dallo slogan ‘Tutti uniti contro l’acqua!’ oppure ‘Tutti insieme contro
la neve!’ per sensibilizzare i cittadini sul pericolo di alluvioni o di
valanghe?>>
Please, guess
what Dr. Delogu is speaking about in that paragraph. It is probably the
greatest foresters’ mistake: those days on which (sadly many foresters still
think like those days) we all used to use ‘fire’ to refer to a BAD thing, and
only a bad one. Nowadays, we know there are GOOD fires and bad ones. In fact,
look this amazing sticker I brought with me from the USA:
Quote 4: <<Prevale
l’idea –tutta mediate dalla politica e dal luogo commune –che la soluzione agli
incendi di interfaccia sia una robusta azione militare di soccorso pubblico e
non invece l’ordinaria e virtuosa buona gestione dei luoghi in cui viviamo>>
Quote 5:
<<[every single word written in the fifth chapter]>>
Fifth chapter
is just amazing, awesome, incredible, impressive, wonderful, delightful,
brilliant, splendid, extraordinary, remarkable… I would like to know more
synonyms: it is just great! And I am not going to tell you anything about it,
except for the title: “Ecologia del
fuoco: un paradosso?”. You’ll have to read it.
There it is,
“Dalla parte del fuoco” by Dr.
Giuseppe Mariano Delogu; it is worth every single minute.
After that I
would like to tell you how CFVA has implemented new technologies in its
firefighting system. That is a complex matter so I will only make a brief
resume regarding the two most interesting tools I know they use.
First of all,
it is obvious that they employ local digital cartography, GPS, Kestrels and all
that stuff. Moreover they (at least GAUF crew) check every single day (during
the wildfire seasson), maybe three or four times, weather forecasts. As
Giuseppe Delogu showed me, these are the main webpages they check:
Let’s review Wildfire Analyst and both LANDSAT and
NDVI cartography.
1) Wildfire Analyst (http://wildfireanalyst.com/)
CFVA bought a
few licenses for that amazing software.
I don’t really know its true potential because I haven’t had the opportunity to
use it with its main developer, Dr. Joaquín Ramírez – Technosylva (http://technosylva.com/).
Hope I take some WA lessons soon
(hopefully in CA).
Basically,
the tool provides a fast on-scene fire analysis. If you are used to the
software, you are able to introduce few parameters and simulate how fire is
going to behave. Actually, you can get analysis showing spread and behavior,
including fire paths and Campbell System analysis.
One of the
greatest things is that you can adjust simulations, once run, by changing some
parameters/data you’re observing on-scene and you’ve realized are not
represented on the simulation. All that happens as fast as you’re able to do
it, because it’s a very fast software. Moreover, I have to say that it is
really easy to conduce simulations. In fact, e. g. you can download
automatically weather data from a data source (that makes it worth, because
introducing weather data –such as wind- in other simulators –for example FARSITE- is a slow process.
Of course it
is also a prevention tool. And I love this. You can simulate either historical
wildfires or likely-to-happen ones in order to manage the forest where it is
really needed –it is time to save money and time, to do critical points
management instead of huge fire breaks and all that stuff, isn’t it?-. Also you
can simulate how a prescribed burn it’s going to behave.
Another
amazing thing about Wildfire Analyst
is the kind of results it provides and the way they are shown. Besides the
typical charts/pictures… it automatically export data to Google Earth so as you
are able to watch the simulation in 3D in an up-to-day cartography, absolutely
versatile, handy, useful and easily share the results. It is great to improve
situational awareness and to focus on what’s really important: an efficient
management of the incident/forest policy. It also generates a complete
simulation report, including source data, incident data…
As you can
imagine, the employ of this tool
makes system much more efficient, allowing incident commander to emphasize
suppression efforts where they are really need, improving his/her incident
awareness and making him/her able to forecast how will fire behave in a wide
range of suppositions (as much as you are able to simulate by varying
parameters).
 |
| Dr. Delogu running a simulation - Picture courtesy of Leandro Usai |
 |
| Cheking simulation's accuracy - Picture courtesy of Leandro Usai |
2) LANDSAT
images and Image Analysis window for ArcGIS 10.1
As the US
Geological Service describes on its webpage: “Landsat represents the world’s longest continuously acquired collection
of space-based moderate-resolution land remote sensing data. Four decades of
imagery provides a unique resource for those who work in agriculture, geology,
forestry, regional planning, education, mapping, and global change research.
Landsat images are also invaluable for emergency response and disaster relief”.
Now, since May
30, 2013, Landsat 8 satellite’s images are available. It is an awesome free
tool, which allow us, foresters, to both better manage ecosystems (aerial view
incomparably increases situational awareness) and emergencies. It is ideal both
for planning tactics and for doing the post-incident work.
You just have
got to visit the project’s webpage: http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov , identify your area of interest, ask for the desired
maps and get the results in the format you want. By combining this images with
the GIS tool ArcGIS, and employing the tool Image Analysis window, you’ll be
able to generate those interesting NDVI maps (Normalized Differential Vegetation Index).
Those are the resulting maps (courtesy of Giuseppe M. Delogu):
This comment by Dr. Delogu is good to better understand the process: <<[...] l'elaborazione è una sommaria azione di classificazione delle bande
del rosso e dell'infrarosso vicino del Landsat 8; può essere fatta anche
su base regionale; si tratta di applicare un indice di calcolo di
questo tipo: R-NIR/R+NIR, dove R è la banda del rosso, NIR è
l'infrarosso vicino>>.
After
that, I would like to share with you our next day’s activities. There we go!
On
August 4, 2013 we (Dr. Delogu and me) visited CFVA Regional Station at Nuoro.
It was such a great idea because there I met Livio Peluffo a GAUF crew member.
He is kind of the perfect firefighter: strong, agile, open-minded, smart and
with a fast-processing brain (so fast!). He is able to make decisions really
fast, always keeping a total situational awareness about all the area of the
incident he’s managing.
I
had the opportunity to make a couple of backfires with him and other guys from
his crew, and that was so exciting. Minute-to-minute tactics (because fire
behaviour was continuously changing) which allow us to control fire as much as
possible. Very nice experience (that was on Laconi Fire – I will tell you about
that fire in future posts).
Besides
his amazing firefighting skills, he is a great designer (I think he studied
Design Engineering or something similar). Actually, he designed GAUF
first-response vehicles, which are really well-prepared. I love its setup.
That
day I had the chance to witness the ‘release’ of his new invention: a foam
spear (retardant) adapted to be attached to one of his previous inventions, the
improved version of the atomizer. So, a firefighter carrying an atomizer (which
is a rigid backpack, 18 liters volume, with an engine propelling water, air or
both) full of retardant foam could spread it, e. g. all over a line to secure it
in order to safely conduce a backfire –in a few seconds. The new spear is
attached to the regular hose (Fire Engine) and a plastic pipe to the atomizer.
In that way, and because of Venturi effect, once water is driven through the
spear, foam is absorbed and pushed too.
The
invention is still in the process of patent, so you’ll have to wait a few
months to watch the video I recorded while testing it. I am sorry.
We
spent the rest of the day visiting the basi
elicotterische di Farcana which is also the Region COP. That is a great
idea because the resources and the managers are together, ready-to-go; even one
COP Officer could embark on the helicopter fast to evaluate with his/her own
eyes the incident.
Let
me share with you the rest of the day by showing some pictures:
See you soon!
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