In this Use Case, we would like to encourage all involved stakeholders in the process to share their contributions for the development of a Vegetation Fire Strategy for Northern Ireland. I start by uploading an article on Barriers to Best Practice. Please feel invited to participate and comment, upload your ideas and contributions. From EFI side we will soon provide also a list of information regarded as useful in the fire strategy process. Here are some links that might be useful, we start to establish some background information on how it is done in different contexts. Should serve as options and decision support:
After hundreds of wildfire incidents in Northern Ireland’s countryside, the government decided to take action mid-2017 and operation WildFire was initiated. The operation, led by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service (NIFRS) had the core task to investigate in more depth a number of wildfires. Fires could spread rapidly through dry ground conditions, putting property, public, habitat, and species at risk.
Following other examples, the government sought to bring forth a collaboration of different fire investigators and experts to establish a fire management strategy. The collaboration brought experts from Ireland together with Experts from the European Forest Institute, working with the European Forest Risk Facility (FRISK) to collect input and expertise for such a fire management strategy. NIEA and the stakeholders from Ireland have previously cooperated in fire-related issues with the European Forest Risk Facility, i.e. fire equipment, training, and fire investigations.