Where tourism meets wildfire: destination risk priorities in Greece

Tourism activity and wildfire-related exposure are increasingly interconnected in Mediterranean destinations, yet their spatial overlap remains underexamined. This study develops an open-data spatial screening framework to identify where tourism pressure and recent historical wildfire exposure coincide across Greek NUTS 3 regions. Using Eurostat tourism nights, GISCO boundaries, population and area denominators, and EFFIS burned-area polygons, the analysis constructs tourism-pressure, tourism-density, wildfire-exposure, and combined-exposure indicators. Global and local spatial statistics assess whether exposure patterns are spatially structured. Results show that overlap is concentrated in a limited set of mainly island and coastal regions. Nine regions are classified as high-priority under the baseline typology, while four remain robust across alternative definitions: Kalymnos–Karpathos–Kasos–Kos–Rhodes, Corfu, Magnisia–Sporades, and Rethymno. The typology is best interpreted as a first-stage regional screening framework, not evidence of site-level wildfire exposure.