1.2. How to approach the guide

1.2 How to approach the guide

The guide can be approached from different perspectives. It can be used by an organisation or individual to identify what contributions to make in the field of vegetation analysis. It can also serve to identify other organisations or profiles with expertise in making such contributions. Both can be used at the European level to identify expertise and facilitate exchange, to know who can provide what in emergency situations requiring external assistance or to identify areas requiring training in a particular location or organisation.

The guide should also help to draw the line between what is forest fire analysis and what are other types of analysis which, although they can be of great help, specialisation and expertise, fall outside the common framework envisaged here.

The first part of the guide attempts to lay the groundwork. Section 1.4 Insights describes the conceptual basis for the guide while section 1.5 Glossary aims to include simple definitions to facilitate the reading. Section 2. Fire Analysis and Assessment (FAA) deals with the description of what the Fire Analysis and Assessment is, both from an individual and a collective (organisational) point of view and in the different phases of emergency management that can occur for a vegetation fire.

The second part of the guide (section 3) describes contributions from fire analysis to facilitate decision-making that can be made from the fire analysis, showing also the impact of these decisions. This section also includes a discussion on the link between fire analysis itself and the liabilities it may entail. From this part, competencies and skills can be extracted but a specific list of these has not been included as they are directly related to the decisions that each organisation must make. However, it serves as a framework and guide to identify them and it can help organisations to do so.

The third part of the guide runs under de name of Fire analysis skills and capabilities (section 4). Precisely for the reasons aforementioned, when addressing specific competencies and skills, it is necessary to consider them inside the context of each organisation. While the explicit definition of all existing skills and capacities has not been exhaustively described, the combination of the content of sections 3 and 4 facilitates the identification on key skills and capacities on fire analysis. Section 4 includes examples of tasks performed by vegetation analysts and proposes a grouping by thematic areas. A proposal for the identification of expertise and domains for potential growth areas through graphs is also included.

Finally, the guide includes different types of examples. On the one hand, specific and brief examples using figures, on the other hand, more developed and comprehensive examples included in the annexes.

The figures included in the sections of the guide show brief examples of what is described in each section and have been compiled from contributions by project part-