Forests on fire: Effects of input data resolution on forest fire behaviour modelling – A case study from Lower Austria

Forest fires are becoming an important hazard in the mountain forests of European alpine areas due to changing environmental and socio-economic conditions. Understanding the fire behaviour is critical for all phases within the disaster management cycle – from prevention and preparedness to response and recovery. PhyFire is a simplified physical model which simulates the fire propagation and allows considering fire suppression measurements to see their effect on the fire behaviour. The model has been used for Mediterranean countries so far but has been now adapted to central European alpine mountain forests within this case study. The model requires the following input data: a digital height model, fuel data, and meteorological data. Besides the adaption process itself the effect of different qualities of input data in terms of temporal and spatial manner were investigated. In this contribution we show the challenges of the adaption process of the PhyFire model to the characteristics of the Austrian case study area and analyse the effect of different resolutions of input data resolution on the overall quality of the fire propagation simulation.