# Commission Regulation (EC) No 1737/2006 of 7 November 2006 laying down detailed rules for the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 2152/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning monitoring of forests and environmental interactions in the Community, Division

Extent: E+W+S+N.I.

The following technical specifications shall apply in relation to the collection of the common core data to be recorded and notified for each forest fire occurred, as indicated in Article 9.
Data shall be supplied in comma delimited ASCII format files (i.e. CSV - Comma Separated Value format). Every fire will be one record of the file. The following information will have to be included in each fire record:
(a) Date and local time of first alert
Composed by:
a1. Date of first alert: The local date (day, month, year) at which the official forest fire protection services were informed of the outbreak of the fire.
The expected data format is [YYYYMMDD], example: 20030702 (2 July 2003)
a2. Time of first alert: the local time (hour, minute) at which the official forest fire protection services were informed of the outbreak of the fire.
The expected data format is [HHMM], with HH from 00 to 23. Examples: 0915, 1446, 0035.
The date and time of first alert are related to the event that triggers the activation of the fire fighting resources. Therefore it is not necessarily the time when a fire, or a possible fire, is physically reported to the forest fire office, but more generally the time when a member of the forest fire protection organization is first alerted of a possible fire or when he directly firstly detects it.
When a check for confirmation of the alert is performed before the activation of the fire fighting crews, the very first alert has to be reported.
(b) Date and local time of first intervention
Composed by:
b1. Date of first intervention: the local date (day, month, year) on which the first fire-fighting units arrived on the scene of the forest fire.
The expected data format is [YYYYMMDD], example: 20030702 (2 July 2003)
b2. Time of first intervention: the local time (hour, minute) at which the first fire-fighting units arrived on the scene of the forest fire.
The expected data format is [HHMM], with HH from 00 to 23. Examples: 0915, 1446, 0035.
The date and time of first intervention corresponds to the time when the first fire fighting crew reaches the fire front, i.e. the moment when the first attack starts.
(c) Date and local time of extinction
Composed by:
c1. Date of fire extinction: the local date (day, month, year) on which the fire was completely extinguished, i.e. when the last fire-fighting units left the scene of the forest fire.
The expected data format is [YYYYMMDD], example: 20030702 (for 2 July 2003)
c2. Time of fire extinction: the local time (hour, minute) at which the fire was completely extinguished, i.e. when the last fire-fighting units left the scene of the forest fire.
The expected data format is [HHMM], with HH from 00 to 23. Examples: 0915, 1 446, 0035.
The date and time of extinction correspond to the time when the fire front was completely extinguished. Therefore it does include the mop up activities and it does not include the time for the crews to return to the headquarters.
Note: The starting of a new day is midnight (time: 00:00). Therefore, if the first alert is for example at 23:30 and the first intervention is at 00:30, than these events have to be reported in different days (d and d+1 respectively).
(d) Location of the outbreak at the commune level
The name and code of the commune where the outbreak of the fire was reported. It shall follow the Member State nomenclature, and the complete list of commune names and codes in use in the Member State and adopted in the common core forest fire database will have to be supplied together with the fire data in a separate file.
The code of the higher hierarchical territorial unit to which the commune belongs to shall also be recorded. Such territorial unit will correspond to the Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) level 3 as defined in the Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council. The recorded NUTS3 code shall be in accordance with the five characters codes reported in Annex I of the same Regulation.
New Member States, for which a list of NUTS3 codes is not provided in Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003, will follow the standard ‘Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS)’ established by the Statistical Office of the European Communities. The reported codes will be the most recent NUTS3 codes as maintained in the GISCO information system.
(e) Total fire-damaged area
The total fire-damaged area corresponds to the estimated final fire size, i.e. the extension of the final area burned by the fire (regardless of the level of damage).
The extension is measured in fraction of hectares with a precision until the second digit, without using the comma as separator (i.e. in hectares*100) Examples:
Burned area = 12,05 hectares, it shall be recorded as 1205; Burned area = 3,2 hectares, it shall be recorded as 320.
In case of unburned areas located inside the burned perimeter (unburned islands), their surface should be excluded from the estimate of the fire size
(f) Breakdown of the fire-damaged area into forest and other wooded land and non forested areas
The total burned area has to be divided into:
f(1) forest and other wooded land area
f(2) non forested area
‘Forest’ and ‘other wooded land’ are defined according to Article 3 of the Forest Focus Regulation. ‘Non forested area’ corresponds to the ‘other land’ defined in Article 3 of the same regulation. If however the fire burns also agricultural or urban land, these areas should not be included in the total burnt area.
The extension is measured in fraction of hectares until the second digit without using the comma as separator (i.e. in hectares*100).
(g) Presumed cause
The presumed cause of the fire should be classified into one of the following four categories:
1.. Unknown;
2.. Natural cause;
3.. Accidental cause or negligence, meaning connection to a human activity but without any intention of causing the fire (e.g. accidents caused by power lines, railways, works, bonfires, etc.).
4.. Deliberate cause or arson.
The datum to be recorded in the fire record is the category number (1 to 4) that is indicated in the list above.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2006/1737/annex/II/division/1 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/eu-regulation-2006-1737/annex-II/division-1
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.