On March 26-27, the employees of "Hydrometeorology and Monitoring Center" SNCO took part in the working discussion on  UNDP-implemented and Russian Federation-funded  "Addressing Climate Change Impact through Enhanced Capacity for Wildfires Management in Armenia" within the framework of “Strengthening of the Forest Fire Management Capacities”  project.
The main goal was to assess wildfire fighting risks for the forest areas of the Republic of Armenia, to analyze the degree of justification of the fire forecasting model in different climatic zones.
In the course of the seminar, wildfire fighting risks of the forest zones located in different climatic zones of the territory of the Republic of Armenia, the position of the mountain slopes and the species of trees in the occurrence of those risks were presented.
The anthropogenic and congenital factors of wildfires, the main ways to reduce their risks were discussed. Great attention was paid to the methods of predicting the degree of fire safety, the essence of those methods and  the peculiarities of their applicability for the territory of the Republic of Armenia were discussed in detail.
The seminar also took a note of a model for assessing wildfire hazard  and monitoring, using GIS  and remote sensing methods, by the example of “Khosrov Forest” state reserve.
As a result of the discussions, a decision was made to locate Nesterov’s fire risk rating index for different forest zones and climatic conditions in the territory of the Republic of Armenia. The methodology will be based on long-term data of actual meteorological observations at “Hydrometeorology and Monitoring Center" SNCO, as well as meteorological studies already recorded during wildfires.