Jaime Senabre1,2
1Director of SINIF.
2 Research Group on Climate and Territorial Planning. University of
Alicante. Spain.
Forest fires represent
an evolutionary opportunity for some species and, at times, a tragedy for human
societies. The devastating fires of 2017 in Portugal and 2018 in Greece are a
clear example of this. Forest fires have been considered by many researchers as
a Natural Hazard or Risk, something that makes us disagree, given that the
human being has a predominant influence on the origin of most ignitions and, in
the evolution and consequences thereof.
From an anthropogenic
vision of the fires, we are convinced that not only must we work on prevention,
self-protection and integral management of the territory, but also on proactive
fire education programs.
For this reason, we
present a characteristic profile of forest fire risk, developed from the study
of the social perception of this threat with a population resident in Spain.
There is no doubt that there are many factors that can affect the social
perception of risks: cultural, sociological, situational, psychological,
psychosocial and those related to the qualitative characteristics of the source
of risk. All these factors are interrelated.
The evaluation of the
qualitative characteristics of forest fire risk based on the study of social
perception, will allow us to better understand the reasons for not acting
proactively in the face of the threat of forest fire. Also, it can be useful
when designing campaigns to raise awareness and prevent forest fires, in short,
as a tool for education on environmental safety issues.
WC Climate Change 2018: Impacts & Responses
September 13-15, 2018 | Rome, Italy
Citation: Senabre, J. (2018). Characteristic profile of forest fire risk from social perception: A study with Spanish population. WC Climate Change 2018: Impacts & Responses. Rome, Italy. Book of abstracts. pp45. https://innovinc.org/images/preconference/vi_30.pdf
