Multicriteria firebreak planning for protecting ecological and cultural values under Wildfire risk: A case study in Catalonia

Abstract

We propose a multicriteria optimization approach for the strategic selection of landscape stands to be included in firebreaks. The method integrates spatially explicit information on urban, floristic, archaeological, and paleontological assets, together with meteorological scenarios and and 10,000 dynamic fire spread simulations performed with Cell2Fire. Based on these simulations, we compute a stand-level Downstream Protection Value (DPV) index and apply an optimization procedure under different treatment constraints and weighting schemes. Three prioritization objectives are considered: (i) minimizing total burned area, regardless of the assets affected; (ii) minimizing burned area with a focus on protecting urban zones; and (iii) minimizing burned area and urban exposure while also accounting for high-value floristic areas and zones of archaeological and paleontological significance. The results show that treating no more than 5 % of the landscape, strategically managed for its inclusion in firebreaks, can reduce total burned area by up to 26 % and urban exposure by nearly 40 %. This framework provides a flexible and computationally efficient tool to support landscape-scale fire planning in complex, multi-value environments.