## 2 Fireighting State
### Problem Survey  
Our first survey was focused on the problems on current forest firefighting missions. We performed this survey to obtain more information about the first research question. Although the official data previously analyzed are useful to answer this question, the opinions of the professionals involved in these activities are also relevant. In this survey, we pose the following questions:  
* Importance of prevention tasks: As previously mentioned, there are two prevention strategies: those focused on causes and those centered on combustibles. This question seeks the importance that professionals give to each one of these strategies. * Problems in prevention tasks: This question seeks to find the most relevant problems in current prevention activities, according to the opinions of firefighters. * Importance of surveillance means: As previously pointed out, forest fires can be detected by citizen collaboration, ground watchmen, and aerial means. This question seeks the importance that professionals give to each one of these means. * Problems in surveillance tasks: This question seeks to find the most relevant problems in current surveillance activities, according to the opinions of firefighters. Problems in extinguishing tasks: This question seeks to find the most relevant problems in current extinguishing activities, according to the opinions of firefighters. We had the support of several firefighting professionals in the writing of the questions and their possible answers. In this way, we could check that our surveys were sound and easy to understand by our target public. Furthermore, we sent the questionnaires to a sample of twenty professionals before their dissemination to check if they could understand them adequately. Finally, we allowed open answers to some questions and shared our contact data to receive doubts. This survey was sent via email to fire stations, unions, and associations, as well as shared with firefighters' communities on several social networks. A total of 140 professionals from different regions of Spain took part in that survey in three weeks (note that this survey is still open to new responses (Forest fires in Spain: Problem survey ([[https://forms.gle/e4327](https://forms.gle/e4327) HBxqqWVMUbY7]([https://forms.gle/e4327](https://forms.gle/e4327) HBxqqWVMUbY7)) [in Spanish])). A summary of the results is shown in Figure 1.  
Figure 1: Results of the problem survey about forest fires in Spain. The survey sample is representative of the professionals involved in forest firefighting in Spain, given that it includes not only the main roles (forest firefighters, technicians, firefighters, forest agents, and volunteers) but also other less common roles (pilots, army forces, researchers, support staff, meteorologists...), in comparison to the official reports [5]. The vast majority of them take part in extinguishing tasks (94%), whereas three quarters have experience in prevention and a half in surveillance tasks. Besides these fundamental tasks, around one-third of the respondents have carried out the coordination of operations (31%) and management of human and material resources (38%). Regarding the means used to perform these tasks, three quarters used ground vehicles and fire trucks, sixty percent aerial vehicles (this includes pilots and airborne firefighters), and fewer tractors (17%) and drones (11%). Spanish firefighters often say that \"summer fires should be extinguished in winter\", remarking on the importance of prevention activities in firefighting. In this sense, the professionals surveyed assign very close scores to all the prevention tasks. Mainly, they give a slightly higher score to the preparation of vegetation (4.4 in a scale from 1 to 5), and prioritize awareness campaigns against malpractices (e.g., barbecue, smoke or throwing glass bottles in the bush) over campaigns against the use of fire in agricultural and livestock activities (4.3 vs. 4.1, respectively). There are more differences between the main problems faced in prevention tasks.