Structural fire risk: The case of Portugal.

This study is focused in mapping the structural fire risk in the vegetated area of Portugal using a deterministic approach based on the concept of fire risk currently accepted by the scientific community which consists in the combination of the fire hazard and the potential economic damage. The fire susceptibility map of Verde and Zêzere (2010) was adopted and updated by the use of a higher resolution digital terrain model, longer burnt area perimeter dataset (1975-2013) and the entire set of Corine land cover inventories. The susceptibility was mapped with five classes to be in accordance with the Portuguese law and the results confirms the good performance of this model not only in the favourability scores but also in the predictive values.

Space-time clustering analysis of wildfires: The influence of dataset characteristics, fire prevention policy decisions, weather and climate.

The present study focuses on the dependence of the space-time permutation scan statistics (STPSS) (1) on the input database's characteristics and (2) on the use of this methodology to assess changes on the fire regime due to different type of climate and fire management activities. Based on the very strong relationship between weather and the fire incidence in Portugal, the detected clusters will be interpreted in terms of the atmospheric conditions. Apart from being the country most affected by the fires in the European context, Portugal meets all the conditions required to carry out this study, namely: (i) two long and comprehensive official datasets, i.

Atmospheric conditions associated with extreme fire activity in the Western Mediterranean region.

Active fire information provided by TERRA and AQUA instruments on-board sun-synchronous polar MODIS platform is used to describe fire activity in the Western Mediterranean and to identify and characterize the synoptic patterns of several meteorological fields associated with the occurrence of extreme fire activity episodes (EEs). The spatial distribution of the fire pixels during the period of 2003-2012 leads to the identification of two most affected sub-regions, namely the Northern and Western parts of the Iberian Peninsula (NWIP) and Northern Africa (NAFR). The temporal distribution of the fire pixels in these two sub-regions is characterized by: (i) high and non-concurrent inter- and intra-annual variability with maximum values during the summer of 2003 and 2005 in NWIP and 2007 and 2012 in NAFR; and, (ii) high intra-annual variability dominated by a prominent annual cycle with a main peak centred in August in both sub-regions and a less pronounced secondary peak in March only evident in NWIP region.

Eyelid entropion.

Entropion is a common eyelid malposition in which the margin turns inward against the globe. If untreated, this condition can cause irritative symptoms like ocular discomfort, corneal abrasion, microbial keratitis, corneal vascularization, and visual loss. It may be classified as cicatricial, congenital, acute spastic and involutional.