Exposure of settlements to wildfires in a transboundary wildland–urban interface region in Central Europe

Climate change has been causing a noticeable rise in disastrous wildfires in Mediterranean and temperate forests. Although forest fires were of smaller size and less concern in Central Europe than for example in the Mediterranean, the region has recently experienced large wildfires. For example, a wildfire burned significant parts of two National Parks at the border between Germany and the Czech Republic in 2022. This event demonstrated the need for local stakeholders and the scientific community to adapt fire risk assessment and management to this new reality. Here we aim to create a wildfire exposure map for the trans-boundary national park region Saxon-Bohemian Switzerland between Germany and the Czech Republic. We use several Earth observation products, historical fire occurrence points, medium to very high fire danger weather and wind scenarios, and three different fire duration scenarios (1, 2, 3 days) to simulate fire behaviour and burn probability, and to finally assess the potential exposure of settlements to wildfires. Observations from the wildfire in 2022 were used to validate the modelling framework. The interactive wildfire exposure map was tested with the general audience and local stakeholders for its usability and usefulness. We generally found higher burn probability and potential flame length at settlements in Czech Republic. As our results and the experiences from the past fire have shown wildfires cross borders, demonstrating the need for coordinated trans-border wildfire management.