WildfiresFighting fire with research results
Every year, devastating forest fires take place in Europe and around the world, destroying thousands of hectares of forests and severely impacting citizens and the environment. EU-funded research teams, mindful of the current and future risks, have been focusing their efforts on developing systems and tools that can help avert disaster.
Every year, devastating forest fires take place in Europe and around the world, destroying thousands of hectares of forests and severely impacting citizens and the environment. The situation looks set to worsen — the European Environment Agency (EEA) predicts that a warmer climate will result in more severe fire weather and an expansion of the fire-prone areas and longer fire seasons (albeit with considerable regional variation).
CORDIS reports that EU-funded research teams are mindful of the current and future risks, and many have been focusing their efforts on developing systems and tools that can help avert disaster. The CRISMA project team, for example, developed an innovative simulation and modelling tool to help decision makers involved in large-scale crisis management — one of the pilot schemes focused on an earthquake and forest fire in Italy. Meanwhile, testing by the AIRBEAM project confirmed that unmanned balloons and satellites can be effectively used to achieve integrated crisis management across large areas — in fact, during the latest drone test flight a fire at a range of more than twenty kilometers was detected.
