Wild fire constitutes one of the most complex phenomena studied in the world. In the last fifteen years, the scientific community has considerably increased its efforts to better understand forest fires through improvement in measurements and modeling. This has been supported by rapid development in the fields of spatial data analysis and computing resources. This combination has enabled the development of new decision support systems, information gathering, and analysis methods, as well as the improvement of existing tools. In spite of this activity, forest fires remain a relevant issue in many countries. Climate change, rural-urban migration, and the growth of the urban-wildland interface are some of the factors leading to an increase in wildfire hazard. This special issue will focus on recent developments and tools devoted to the global fire management.

The main focus of this special issue will be on both the existing and upcoming decision support systems used for fire danger rating, fire spread prediction, and fire hazard mitigation. Complete decision tools as well as relevant scientific contributions to be implemented in such operational tools are welcome. The special issue will become an international forum for researchers to summarize the most recent developments and ideas in the field, with special emphasis given to the results useful for operational tools. The topics to be covered include, but are not limited to:

• Fire prevention
• Fire management
• Fire safety
• Fire behavior
• Urban-wildland interface
• Fundamentals of fire
• Wildland fuels modeling
• Fires and weather interaction

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jc/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: