As identified rightfully in the Interreg Euro MED programme, climate change will have the highest environmental impact in the north and south of Europe. Areas with drought risks and heat waves are concentrated along the Mediterranean. At the same time, anthropogenic influence in the region is extensive, to a large extent, due to the prevailing overall tourism-oriented national economies in the Mediterranean. With that common challenge in mind, this area is in deep need of transnational harmonisation of tools and practices designed to monitor and manage natural disasters and risks induced by human activities, all with the single goal: creating a common approach to the prevention of climate change effects.
The FRED project focuses on preventing and mitigating climate change impacts in the form of wildfires. Unfortunately, the Mediterranean has become a wildfire hotspot, particularly because climate change is conducive to a greater capacity to create extreme wildfire events that harm and displace millions yearly. The nature of wildfires has changed drastically. To illustrate that, in 2022 alone, over 600 000 hectares of this programme’s ecosystems were destroyed by fires, whereas the annual average for the 2006-2021 period was around 297 000 ha. The overall objective of the FRED project is to implement advanced ICT/UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) remote sensing tools for climate change adaptation, disaster risk prevention and mitigation
in the wildfire segment.
The change that will be generated is a significant increase in the prevention capacity of relevant authorities of the most endangered fire-prone areas. The change will directly involve six piloting areas in different MED countries and indirectly connect stakeholders/beneficiaries through capitalising results and subsequently transferring the specific, efficient and pragmatic tools for wildfire prevention and mitigation that will be implemented in this project.
Having completed the FRED digital tool as one of the most significant outputs of the project and having piloted it in six different areas, in the transfer stage of the project, the partnership will roll out the solution to five new relevant authorities and their respective territories in Greece, Italy, Portugal, the Republic of North Macedonia and Spain. The transfer to new territories will be done at the technical level (new dataset creation, localization/adaptation of the software) and at the level of capacity building, while at the same time addressing the policy segment of new digital solutions in forest management and wildfire prevention.
