The development of a web-application for improved wildfire risk management in Lebanon

Abstract

Lebanon’s National strategy for forest fire management emphasizes the need to enhance the capacity of stakeholders in Lebanon to assess and manage wildfire in light of future climate change and residential expansion into wildland areas. In this context, we developed a web-based decision framework to improve fire risk management. The primary objective of the application (FireLab) was to provide an online user-friendly interface for displaying data that are critical for making informed fire-management decisions. Data include 257 variables related to fire activity, risk, and hazard and are generated at the municipality level for all of Lebanon. FireLab is delivered through a web browser, making it widely accessible to the public in a format that allows users to easily display wildfire conditions and to describe and share modeled wildfire potential scenarios of current and future conditions.