FIREPRIME: Tools and Services to Improve Wildfire Safety and Prevention in Europe

Wildfires are a growing problem across Europe. In recent years, fires of unprecedented scale and intensity have devastated several EU regions, increasingly threatening settlements located in wildland-urban interface areas and causing extraordinary damage.

To address this challenge, and inspired by existing frameworks in North America such as Firewise and FireSmart, the initiative aims to lay the foundations for a homegrown European programme to strengthen fire resilience in neighbourhoods and developments located at the wildland-urban interface. It focuses on three critical targets: homes, communities, and infrastructure.

The project seeks to establish the foundations for a European programme that promotes fire resilience in urban communities and to eventually transfer the lessons learned to other fire-prone regions across Europe. The programme will be launched through three pilot sites:

Catalonia (Sant Cugat del Vallès): The focus is on community preparedness and empowering residents of a predominantly urban population located in an area with a very high fire risk.

Austria (Haiming): The main challenge is the low perception of wildfire risk despite increasing threats. Efforts focus on raising awareness, particularly among property owners, tourists, and businesses.

Sweden (Kalmar County): The project works in a forest-rural interface area, with a highly scattered built environment made mostly of wooden structures and the presence of critical infrastructure such as railways. Key challenges include emergency response times and the traditional use of fire in a changing climate.

The Sant Cugat Pilot

One of the project’s flagship actions is the creation of a mobile app that will provide residents with tools to assess wildfire risk levels and receive recommendations on how to prevent and protect against fires. The mobile app, developed by UPC, will use a quantitative analysis based on fault tree diagrams to evaluate the likelihood of a building catching fire based on multiple factors (construction materials, garden maintenance, presence of vegetation, etc.).

Homeowners will answer questions about their property —such as construction materials, maintenance conditions, or surrounding vegetation— and, based on their responses, the app will generate a risk score. It will also provide tailored recommendations to reduce the risk and allow users to compare their score with the neighbourhood average, thereby promoting awareness and community engagement.

This pilot test is being conducted in the neighbourhoods of La Floresta and Sol i Aire in Sant Cugat del Vallès, chosen for their variety of housing developments and the strong involvement and awareness of residents regarding wildfire risks. The action began with a small group of local residents who are testing the app, and it will later be extended to the wider community, with complementary training and awareness activities for both adults and children.

In parallel with the app development, the FIREPRIME project will roll out an educational and community engagement strategy tailored to the local context of Collserola. It will engage various community groups —including children, young people, homeowners, and people with functional diversity— through training sessions, volunteer activities, and wildfire preparedness days, such as the one scheduled for May 17 in La Floresta. During this event, Civil Protection and the Catalan Fire Department will engage with the public to discuss alert and emergency response protocols, evacuation and sheltering strategies, and self-protection actions.

The project is being implemented in collaboration with the Sant Cugat City Council, the Catalan Fire Department, Civil Protection, the Collserola Natural Park, the Sant Cugat Forest Defence Association (ADF), self-protection groups, and neighbourhood associations.

Impact

The FIREPRIME project will have a significant impact on how European communities respond to the growing risk of wildfires, particularly in areas where natural spaces border urban settlements. The project not only addresses the technical aspects of wildfire risk (vulnerability assessments, the app, forest management) but also strongly integrates social, cultural, and educational dimensions.

Consortium, Budget and Funding

FIREPRIME includes the participation of other UPC research groups, such as the Integrated Software, Services, Information and Data Engineering (inSSIDE) group and the Group of Software and Service Engineering (GESSI). Project partners also include the Pau Costa Foundation, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, and the Research Institutes of Sweden.

The project started in February 2024 and is expected to be completed by January 2026. It is funded with a total of € 673,698.