In Portugal, the rapid growth in housing in and near wildland–urban interfaces (WUIs) increases the wildfire risk to lives and structures. The goal of our study was to assess wildfire hazard in the Central Region of Portugal and in the contact areas of the 60,373 km of WUIs existing in the study area. The degree to which wildfire is a hazard to the landscape and the different urban interfaces areas was assessed using the spatial arrangement of land use/land cover (LULC), topography, and historical incidence of burnt area. The results show that in more than half of the Central Region territory, the wildfire hazard is high or very high; however, most WUIs are in contact with low or very low hazard classes in a total of 87% of the segments. The LULC analysis in the different wildfire hazard classes in WUI contact areas shows that agricultural crops are predominant in the low and very low hazard classes, while in the very high and high hazard classes shrub communities, coniferous and scrub forests dominate, respectively. These results can assist in designing appropriate prevention measures and improving the effectiveness of fire prevention.

Vulnerability assessment is a vital component of wildfire management. This research focuses on the evaluation of wildfire vulnerability in the Central Region of Portugal, an area historically affected by catastrophic fire events. The overall methodology entailed applying an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to the relevant spatial variables for evaluating vulnerability associated with exposure, sensitivity, and response capacity at landscape and the wildland–urban interface (WUI) scale. Of the selected criteria, the existence of fuel in direct contact with built-up areas, population density, and firefighters’ travel time were considered the most important criteria for inclusion in the vulnerability map. At landscape scale, 31% of the Central Region presents high and very high classes of vulnerability, while 22% of WUIs are classified as highly vulnerable to fire. Although the inland areas emerge as the most vulnerable, this approach enables scattered vulnerable hotspots to be identified in almost all of the Central Region. The results could be very helpful in terms of developing and enhancing local policies to mitigate human and material damage.

In recent decades, wildfires have become common disasters that threaten people’s lives and assets, particularly in wildland–urban interfaces (WUIs). Developing an effective evacuation strategy for a WUI presents challenges to emergency planners because of the spatial variations in biophysical hazards and social vulnerability. The aim of this study was to map priority WUIs in terms of evacuation. The factors considered were the seriousness of the risk of wildfire exposure, and the population centres whose greatest constraints on the evacuation process stemmed from the nature of the exposed population and the time required to travel to the nearest shelter/refuge. An integrated framework linking wildfire hazard, social vulnerability, and the time taken to travel by foot or by car to the nearest refuge/shelter was applied. The study area includes two municipalities (Lousã and Sertã) in the mountainous areas of central Portugal that are in high-wildfire-risk areas and have very vulnerable and scattered pockets of exposed population. The combination of wildfire risk and travelling time to the nearest shelters made it possible to identify 20% of the WUIs that were priority areas for evacuation in the case of Sertã. In the case of Lousã, 3.4% were identified, because they were highly exposed to wildfire risk and had a travelling time to the nearest shelter of more than 15 min on foot. These results can assist in designing effective pre-fire planning, based on fuel management strategies and/or managing an effective and safe evacuation.

The assessment of the risk of evacuation in a wildfire scenario can be decisive to save human lives, especially in Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) areas. This study aims to identify the priority settlements in terms of evacuation and assistance in the municipalities of Lousã and Sertã, through the combination of the susceptibility of wildfires occurrence, resulting from the combination of biophysical variables, and the social vulnerability, directed towards evacuation support, based on socio-demographic variables, at the statistical subsection scale. The results emphasise two municipalities extremely susceptible to the occurrence of forest fires and a wide variation in terms of social vulnerability, directed towards evacuation, based on the different approaches applied. In terms of evacuation risk, settlements located in mountainous areas and surrounded by forest communities were classified as priority.

No município do Sabugal, o processo de abandono de terrenos agrícolas e florestais, a par do absentismo dos proprietários, conduziu à acumulação de grandes quantidades de massa combustível e a uma maior frequência e intensidade dos incêndios. Com o presente trabalho pretende-se avaliar a perceção que a população natural, residente ou não no concelho, tem de algumas medidas previstas no âmbito do Programa de Transformação da Paisagem (PTP), o qual visa aumentar a resiliência do território em áreas fortemente afetadas pelos incêndios florestais, como é exemplo o município do Sabugal.