First General Assembly & 2nd MC meeting
Dear Colleagues,
With this we would like to invite you for the first General Assembly Meeting of the COST Action FireLinks in Sofia (Bulgaria) held on the 8th and 9th of October 2019 in The House of Science and Technology (FNTS) situated close to the city centre.
This first scientific meeting of this COST Action will focus on setting the agenda for the coming 4 years in which the Action will run. A provisional program is listed at the end of this document. Apart from several keynote addresses introducing key issues of fires in Europe and the working group topics the meeting will be attended by fire managers and decision makers outside of academia who will present their view on fire perception, risk and scientific research, and share with us the questions and needs policy makers and end users have. This will link the science and end-user community to find common language and create an interactive atmosphere. In addition, it is important that all involved in this Action will get to know each other and each other’s work. For this purpose we would like to invite all participants (or groups of participants) to make a poster to present their work. In the program there will be ample time to look at each other’s posters and discuss possible linkages and set up collaboration.
To facilitate attendance of as many participants as possible within our limited budget, we will reimburse a flat rate for the hotels of 60 euro per night. This should be sufficient for a 3* hotel in Sofia as there is excellent choice in this beautiful city. We recommend, for example, the Hotel Niky.
Reimbursement
To enable the attendance of as many people as possible we want to lower the flat rate for the hotels to 60 euro per night.
What falls in the reimbursement?
- Travel on basis of receipts;
- Hotel expenses with a flat rate for accommodation of 60 euro per night (with a maximum of 3 nights eligible for reimbursement);
- Meals: flat rate of 20 euro per meal that is not provided by the organisation.
Preliminary schedule and titles for the Meeting
8:15 Registration opens
9:00. Stefan Doerr. Welcome and draft agenda of the meeting
9:10. Artemi Cerdà. Introduction to the FIRElinks mission
9:30. Keynote 1: Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz
Wildfire trends and wildfire risk forecasting at the European level
10:00 Keynote 2: Nicolas Faivre
Opportunities and challenges of the FireLinks network within the EU R&I landscape
10:30 Coffee break
11:30 The ‘Fire Problem’ and ‘State of the Art’ in each country – Part 1
(10 minutes per national representant)
Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Israel
13:00 Lunch at the conference venue
14:30 The ‘Fire Problem’ and ‘State of the Art’ in each country – Part 2
(10 minutes per national representant)
Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Serbia, N. Macedonia, Kosovo, Bulgaria
16:00 Coffee break
16:30-17:30 2nd MC meeting (only open to MC members)/ Posters attendance for non MC members
17:30-18:30 Posters with discussions and refreshments
Conference dinner (20 euro to be paid to the organization and reimbursed via COST)
9:00 Keynote 3: Juli Pausas
Wildfires as an ecosystem service
9:30 Keynote 4: Gavriil Xanthopoulos & Ioannis Mitsopoulos
The catastrophic fire of July 2018 in Greece and the Report of the Independent Committee that was appointed by the government to investigate the reasons for the worsening wildfire trend in the country
10:00 Keynote 5: Nina Dobrinkova
CMINE Wildfire Task Group activities and fire risk modelling tools applicable for fire suppression measures
10:30 Coffee break
11:00 The State of the Art it each country – part 3
(10 minutes per national representant)
Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Latvia
12:30 Lunch at the conference venue
14:00 The State of the Art it each country – part 4
(10 minutes per national representant)
UK, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia
15:30 Coffee break
16:00 Breakout groups with a focus on key issues to be addressed in each WG, and for promoting training and career development
17:00 Breakout group feedback and panel discussion to set the agenda for this COST Action
18:30 Closure