Workshop meeting to collect input for the Northern Irish Vegetation Fire Strategy
45 participants from across Ireland, all of them highly interested in vegetation fire, held a workshop meeting on 20-21 March 2018 in Belfast. The event was also attended by a number of international fire experts and specialists from the UK, Spain, Germany and the US: Chuck Bushey, former president of IAWF; Michael Bruce, Vice Chair of Scottish Wildfire Forum; Rob Gazzard, UK Forestry Commission Fire Adviser; Craig Hope, Lead Wildfire Officer South Wales Fire Service; Simon Thorp, UK Heather Trust; Jordi Vendrell, fire weather and behavior analyst of the Pau Costa Foundation; Alexander Held, European Forest Risk Facility (hosted by European Forest Institute’s Bonn office).
Day 1 was held in the “Mount Conference Center” to discuss:
- Workshop Introduction and Guest Introduction
- Prevention: Managing human-caused ignitions
- Prevention: Managing vegetation and fuel loads
- Wildfire Response and post-fire management
- Leadership / Management Models
- Resource prioritization
- Evaluation of Questionnaire
Day 2 offered us to visit recent burn sites and to discuss the lessons-learned with the responding fire officers. Furthermore, we developed fire-risk-management plans for the future.
The workshop report and proceedings as well as contributions from the workshop participants will be published during the coming weeks at the RiskPlatform.
