Fire Database in the European Forest Fire Information System (version 2-3-1)

This dataset series refers to the Fire Database, containing the forest fire information compiled by countries in Europe, Middle East and North Africa, in the context of the development of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). ▷_How to cite: see below_◁  

The Regulation EEC No 804/94 (now expired) established a Community system of information on forest fires for which a systematic collection of a minimum set of data on each fire occurring, the so called “Common Core”, had to be carried out by the Member States participating in the system.

This regulation was replaced by the Forest Focus regulation in 2003.

Following the Forest Focus regulation (EC) No 2152/2003, concerning monitoring of forests and environment interactions in the Community, the forest fire common core data was continued to be recorded in order to collect comparable information on forest fires at Community level.

Since 2000 the forest fire data provided each year by individual EU Member States and other countries in Europe, Middle East and North Africa are checked, stored and managed by JRC within EFFIS. At present the database contains fire data from 22 countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey.

Updated annual country totals supplied separately by the same authorities are available for download in EFFIS.

Users can request custom annual or monthly summaries of burnt area or number of fires by country, NUTS2 or NUTS3 region, from the Point of contact.

__How to cite__ - When using these data, please cite the relevant data sources. A suggested citation is included in the following:       

- Camia, A., Houston Durrant, T., San-Miguel-Ayanz, J., 2014. The European Fire Database: technical specifications and data submission. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. IBSN:978-92-79-35929-3, https://doi.org/10.2788/2175      

- San-Miguel-Ayanz, J., Houston Durrant, T., Boca, R., Libertà, G., Branco, A., de Rigo, D., Ferrari, D., Maianti, P., Artés Vivancos, T., Schulte, E., Loffler, P., Benchikha, A., Abbas, M., Humer, F., Konstantinov, V., Pešut, I., Petkoviček, S., Papageorgiou, K., Toumasis, I., Kütt, V., Kõiv, K., Ruuska, R., Anastasov, T., Timovska, M., Michaut, P., Joannelle, P., Lachmann, M., Pavlidou, K., Debreceni, P., Nagy, D., Nugent, C., Di Fonzo, M., Leisavnieks, E., Jaunķiķis, Z., Mitri, G., Repšienė, S., Assali, F., Mharzi Alaoui, H., Botnen, D., Piwnicki, J., Szczygieł, R., Janeira, M., Borges, A., Sbirnea, R., Mara, S., Eritsov, A., Longauerová, V., Jakša, J., Enriquez, E., Lopez, A., Sandahl, L., Reinhard, M., Conedera, M., Pezzatti, B., Dursun, K. T., Baltaci, U., Moffat, A., 2017. Forest fires in Europe, Middle East and North Africa 2016. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. ISBN:978-92-79-71292-0, https://doi.org/10.2760/17690      

European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) (2018): Fire Database in the European Forest Fire Information System (version 2-3-1). European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC) [Dataset] PID: http://data.europa.eu/89h/678deb39-e35f-4236-a984-42d69bf95dec

Fire Database information is based on data files submitted annually by the contributing countries. Data from individual fire events are aggregated by NUTS3 region and month for dissemination. Not every country provides information from every fire so some regions and years may be under-represented or completely missing. Annual totals supplied separately by the same authorities may be used to assess the extent of missing data. European NUTS administrative regions have variable shape and area. Considering NUTS3 regions, the radius of a circle with equivalent area in 95 % of the regions would be less than 65 km (see [EUROSTAT data](http://europa.eu/!BW88cB); to better assess the variable area of the NUTS3 regions, the quantiles 90 % and 99 % of the equivalent radius would respectively be about 50 km, and about 90 km).