SYPYDA: A software tool for fire management in Mediterranean pine forests of Greece

• We developed a software for fire management of Aleppo and Calabrian pine forests.
• The software has been designed via a friendly and modern graphical user interface.
• The software tool enables fire prediction potential and fuel treatments evaluation.

The main objective of this study is the design and the development of a fire management software tool for Mediterranean pine forests of Greece. The system operates as a standalone application and allows the end users to apply various fire environment (meteorology, topography, fuel) scenarios in order to estimate the characteristics of fuel complexes in Mediterranean pine stands, to predict the expected fire behavior, as well as to implement and evaluate fuel treatments for reducing the intensity and severity of fires in such ecosystems. The system simulates fire behavior (probability of crown fire initiation, type of fire, rate of spread and fireline intensity) in different types of understory vegetation and stand overstory structure under different weather conditions using current well-tested fire behavior prediction models. All user interaction with the software is done via a friendly and modern Graphical User Interface (GUI), designed in Windows Presentation Foundation/eXtensible Application Markup Language (WPF/XAML), a framework with User Interface (UI) elements coded in C# .NET. The proposed system is expected to assist forest researchers, forest service officials and land managers to evaluate fuel hazard and assess the potential for initiation and spread of wildfires in Aleppo and Calabrian pine forests in Greece.