Fire management in the European context, and specifically in the Mediterranean environment, often addresses the symptom rather than the root causes. The accumulation of flammable vegetation, global warming, land abandonment, and urban sprawl together create the perfect conditions for increasingly intense and complex fires. A profound structural prevention approach, involving planning of both mountainous and lowland areas to organically reduce excess vegetation, is necessary to make fires — which cannot be completely eradicated under current and future conditions — more manageable. In addition, it is necessary to redefine the approach to fire management, which still relies on techniques from the 1960s and 1970s when fires were primarily rural in nature. The Incident Command System, designed and developed in the USA and adopted in many parts of the world and in some European Regions (e.g., Catalonia and Andalusia), is the new integrated and organizational approach to fight against fire. Among the Italian Regions, Tuscany Region has implemented an initial structure in this direction, with the so-called Assisted Operations Direction. However, much work remains to be done, particularly in other regions, to enable more effective operational and methodological exchanges while still respecting regional competencies on the matter.
