Role of Internet in the decision-making sequence for wildland fire management in Europe: the E-FIS service

Recently a noticeable increase of Internet-based services has been observed. A good number of Web-sites have been devoted to forest fires in a list of subjects such as forest fire global monitoring, danger indexes, wildland-urban interface, fighting and safety and forest fire research among others. A review of contents and functions of the mentioned sites is pre- sented. The project E-FIS, a market feasibility study, has been developed under the auspices of Ten-Telecom Programme of the Information Society DG of the European Commission. Seven entities of five European countries have participated in the project, all affected severely by forest fires. Within the project a survey on the needs and Internet-based existing products and services has been completed, which main conclusions are also presented in this paper.