The second Staff-Exchange Twinning visit (SET-2) occurred from May 15 to 19, 2023, with Dr. Carlos Walker-Ravena and Mr. Nikolaos Kalogeropoulos from Imperial College London visiting the European University of Cyprus – CERIDES (EUC-CERIDES)
The visit began with introductions and detailed discussions on the objectives of Work Package 3 (WP3), focusing on fire modelling and evacuation tools. The schedule included meetings with the CERIDES’ team and discussions on planning next steps.
On the second day, the team visited the Cyprus Department of Forests Headquarters in Platania and the Troodos Mountain region where they had the opportunity to study vegetation types and wildfire risks. This field trip aimed to gather data for validating FARSITE, a wildfire modelling software, for Cypriot vegetation.
The third day featured discussions with Ms. Pooja Pandey, a member of the EUC-CERIDES team and PhD candidate through the Pyrolife Project funded by the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions within the European H2020 programme. Ms. Pandey’s PhD research on wildfire management was the main subject of discussions, while the session also included further brainstorming for the FARSITE modelling training. The team worked on creating a handbook for fuel vegetation models and debated the feasibility of introducing evacuation modelling for Cyprus.
The fourth and fifth days involved meetings with the Cyprus Fire Service to plan the next in line Hand-On Training Short Course-1, focusing on fire-wildfire dynamics and fire demos. The visit included an assessment of Fire Brigade – Emergency Services facilities to be used for training and courses and a field trip to a recently affected wildfire area.
The productive visit concluded with witnessing a recent wildfire spread and reviewing training needs to tailor the next actions of the project and more specifically the WP3.
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