The PREFER FP7 project: Damage severity maps validation results

PREFER is one of the Copernicus FP7 Emergency projects funded in 2012. It is uniquely devoted to forest pre-and post-fire management. The overall goal of the project is to develop and demonstrate a pre-operational portfolio of products, based on Earth Observation data for helping fires management at Mediterranean scale. Samples of the PREFER (Space-based Information Support for Prevention and REcovery of Forest Fires Emergency in the MediteRranean Area) information products are available to stakeholders through the project Geoserver (prefer.cgspace.it). The project foresees the utilization of satellite images optical and SAR at low (MODIS), medium (Landsat, Spot) and high (Kompsat, RapidEye, Pleiades, Cosmo-SkyMed, TanDEM-X, etc.) spatial resolution and a refresh rate of the products varying from high (days) to low (twice a month) to very low (once a year). The present paper is devoted to introduce the methodology developed for computing the maps of the level of damage caused in vegetated areas by fires and to present the results of the validation process just started.