Presentation short abstract

Drawing on the Akyaka Disaster Volunteers’ response to the 2021 Turkey fires, we present "FireGuard": a participatory digital platform pilot. It converts local knowledge into verifiable data, bridging community and state efforts to escape the "Fire Fighting Trap" and foster anti-fragile earthcare.

Presentation long abstract

This contribution frames the response to the Mediterranean wildfire crisis as a practice-based intervention. We identify the "Fire Fighting Trap" a reactive suppression cycle driven by political imperatives, as a failure to value preventative stewardship, which paradoxically accelerates biomass accumulation and risk. To counter this, we draw on the evolution of the Akyaka Disaster Volunteers in the Gökova region of Southwest Turkey following the catastrophic 2021 mega-fires.

Central to this intervention is the development of "FireGuard," a participatory digital platform pilot-tested in 2025. FireGuard serves as a "collective risk ledger," a novel digital tool that enables rural residents to map local hazards and assets using mobile interfaces. This converts tacit ecological knowledge into actionable, verifiable data for state planning.

Results from the 2025 pilot across 16 neighborhoods demonstrate the efficacy of this approach: community-logged data led to immediate, state-executed fuel reduction and cleared evacuation routes. Furthermore, the process shifted institutional perceptions, transforming volunteers from emergency manpower into essential partners in risk management. By leveraging this digital commons infrastructure to bridge the gap between informal community labor and formal institutional governance, we demonstrate a concrete pathway for fostering "anti-fragile" communities. This approach moves beyond resilience, aiming to restore the severed metabolic relationship between inhabitants and their landscape through valued, verifiable earthcare.