The Government of Castilla–La Mancha (JCCLM) held its first operational and safety course on wildland–urban interface (WUI) fires in Toledo from October 20 to 23, 2025, with David Caballero (MeteoGrid) serving as the lead instructor.
The training was primarily designed for Castilla–La Mancha’s Environmental Agents, although other emergency-response agencies—including municipal and regional fire services—also took part. The program included a series of instructional sessions featuring case studies and practical exercises in which participants were required to solve operational and safety scenarios.
In several of these sessions, numerical simulations produced on HPC clusters as part of the HIDALGO2 project were used to illustrate fire and smoke behavior. The ability to generate visual scenarios from numerical wildfire simulations is emerging as a powerful tool for training and preparing WUI response teams, particularly by enhancing situational awareness in highly complex emergencies.
The course concluded with field exercises in the Río Cedena residential area, where participants were presented with multiple WUI scenarios and tasked with developing appropriate strategies, tactics, and operational solutions.
