Structured Approaches for Forest Fire Emergencies in Resilient Societies (SAFERS)

Description:

Forest fires are exacerbated by extreme weather conditions, which are increasing both in frequency and in magnitude due to climate change. Globally, massive fires have swept through forests and other landscapes at an alarming rate, resulting in the loss of human lives, destruction of homes and biodiversity, and emitting millions of tons of CO₂ and other pollutants in addition to various destructive impacts. Therefore, the need of effective management of forest fire emergencies has become very crucial.

To respond to this global challenge, the European Union funded project under the Horizon 2020 programme SAFERS supports societies becoming more resilient across the key phases of the forest fires emergency management cycle. SAFERS is creating anintegrated platform featuring a forest fire Decision Support System. The platform uses information from different sources: earth observations from Copernicus and GEOSS, fire sensors in forests, topographic data, weather forecasts and even crowdsourced data from social media and other apps that can be used by citizens and first responders to provide situational in-field information.

Such Big Data is processed using Artificial Intelligence algorithms to generate useful information: risk maps to better plan preparedness actions, early  detection of active fires, fire propagation predictions, burned area and fire front delineation, impact assessment estimations, and habitat recovery maps. Moreover, the SAFERS Decision Support System suggests best practices according to the emergency phase (prevention and preparedness, detection and response, restoration and adaptation) and to the current situation using a semantic knowledge base. 

Project information

Lead

LINKS Foundation – Leading Innovation & Knowledge for Society (Italy)

Partners

CIMA-International Centre on Environmental Monitoring (Italy)

Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH) (Greece)

Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) (Finland)

Riscognition (Germany)

Astrosat (Scotland)

WaterView (Italy)

ALPHA Consultants (UK)

Pau Costa Foundation (PCF) (Spain)

CSI Piemonte (Italy)

Fire and Rescue Department of North Corsica (SIS2B) (France)

Hellenic Rescue Team (HRT) (Greece)

Hellenic Ministry of Defence (HMOD) (Greece)