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A forest fire hazard is influenced by ecological, human and climatic conditions. Forest fire directly causes biodiversity loss, forest degradation and climate change. It has direct ecological, economic and social impacts. Fire-prone area modelling is done to have the most effective system of fire management and at the same time to reduce its deleterious effect on ecosystems, communities and landscapes. Geospatial techniques are proving to be powerful tools to assess the forest fire risks and their management. The present study deals with identification of fire-prone areas and their management in Periyar tiger reserve, the mega biodiversity hot spot in Western Ghats mountainous region of Kerala in southern India, using GIS and remote sensing techniques. Large areas of forest are affected by fire in every year in this region. Two types of data are used in the study i.e. spatial and nonspatial data. Spatial data mainly includes remote sensing data, forest block, GPS field data, settlement boundaries, road/trek path network and most importantly the existing water bodies in that area. The nonspatial data pertains to meteorological data on temperature and rainfall. The parameters in consideration for the analysis are vegetation type, forest disturbance, vicinity to settlement, distance from road, slope, aspect, temperature, amount of litter and rainfall. All these parameters have direct/indirect influence on the occurrence of fire and were integrated using GIS. A multiparametric weighted index model has been adopted to derive the ‘fire-risk’ zone/fire-prone area map. The final output shows forest fire-risk area map of Periyar tiger reserve in four categories such as very high risk, high risk, moderate risk and low risk. Based on this final output, the study attempts to give insight into the use of remote sensing and GIS for sustainable fire management. For that, various spatial analysis have been carried out like identification of suitable sites for construction of check dams to ensure water availability in combating fires and for locating fire watch towers for better fire management. The present study effectively proved that a system for sustainable forest fire management could be established, and such a system would be in tune with UNESCO’s Millenium Development Goal 7 of ‘Ensuring environmental sustainability’.