Fire Landscape in rural Portugal

Typology: Land management, Building Design

Master thesis, TU-Berlin

Planning: Summer 2020

Scales: Project Site 15ha / Parish 17km²

In 2017 a mega-fire ignited in the district Pedrógão Grande in Central Portugal, taking the life of 66 people.

Stakeholders across this fire-prone landscape and across disciplines were interviewed to make sense of why in some districts land management is mostly run by only 2 industry types, notwithstanding their decreasing productivity, namely monocultured eucalyptus-forests for the paper industry & pine tree-forests for the timber industry.

My field investigation sought to understand if there were viable alternative business models that incorporated not only financial and economic sustainability but social and environmental goals to better manage fire risk and provide economic opportunity to the region.

It sought to be one contribution to the search for an alternative social economic model to the standing ones today. Ultimately left unchecked, the aforementioned businesses will further have environmental, social and financial ramifications across Portugal.

The geographical analysis and the parish-wide solutions mapping were done with the programme ArcGIS.

#Antropocene #Territorial Planning #Climate Adaptative Solutions #Future-Proof Planning