Stavros Papavassiliou
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Stavros Papavassiliou's PhD research project
Sensing Under Fire is an examination of the political role of remote sensing used a means of forest fire management, under the rapidly changing fire regimes in the southeastern periphery of the European Union.
Currently, fire information systems are mostly driven by a variety of remotely-sensed operational images and associated algorithms, aimed at estimating fire risk, monitoring active fires, and quantifying their impact. In Greece, after years of austerity, compounded by the effects climate change, 'wild'fires are weaponized against workers, migrants, resistance organisations, and marginalised groups in two ways: Firstly, through the securitisation of emergency response and privatisation of risk, forest fires take on the character of stochastic arson, assaulting and dispossessing those in their path. Secondly, fire is employed as a defence against the delivery of justice through its capacity to attack the very conditions that make sensing possible. The research investigates conflagrations in the region in relation to the political ecologies and aesthetic conditions of fire towards a critical evaluation of contemporary remote sensing practices.
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