Integrated, large-scale coverage forest monitoring
Searching for the integration of forest monitoring solutions enabling a large-scale area coverage and enabling the integration of new and legacy systems across stakeholders for cohesive monitoring of forest areas.
Problem
Existing forest monitoring systems lack integration and wide coverage, leading to limited data availability, incomplete understanding of forest conditions, and compromised management and mitigation of Extreme Wildfire Events’ impacts.
Why the Problem exists?
The problem of insufficient integrated and wide-coverage forest monitoring arises due to several factors. Firstly, traditional monitoring systems often operate in silos, with separate agencies and organisations collecting data using different methodologies and focusing on specific aspects of forest. This fragmentation leads to data gaps, inconsistencies, and limited interoperability, impeding comprehensive forest monitoring. Additionally, resource constraints, technological limitations, and lack of coordination between stakeholders further contribute to the problem, hindering the establishment of a holistic and integrated approach to forest monitoring.
Looking for solutions that completely or partially solve the following:
- Integrate data from various forest monitoring sources.
- Ensure interoperability and facilitate data sharing among different stakeholders.
- Enable the use of legacy and cutting-edge remote sensing technologies to improve the spatial and temporal coverage of forest monitoring.
- Capture detailed information on forest structure, vegetation health, and fuel conditions.
- Automate data processing, derive meaningful insights and enable timely wildfire management and mitigation decision-making.
- Foster stakeholder collaboration to enhance the collective understanding and monitoring of forest ecosystems.
- Engage citizens in data collection and monitoring efforts.
Requirements
- Ensure the solution is capable of interoperating with existing monitoring frameworks.
- Ensure the solution can be scaled up to cover large forest areas, at a regional, national, or global scale.
- Enable the generation of timely and actionable information from forest monitoring data.
Limitation(s)
- Explore cost-effective solutions and partnerships for systems and infrastructure.
- Human resources and capacity building for the operation.
- Address data privacy and security concerns.
- Ensure compatibility with current solutions.
- Ensure flexibility to accommodate future advancements and emerging technologies.
Fire Management Phase(s)
Prevention & Preparedness; Detection & Response
Living Labs
Bulgaria Living Lab; Catalonia-Spain Living Lab.
Voice of the Living Lab(s)
“A good monitoring system and access to all endangered territories and objects is not maintained. The information from the few available cameras in the country is not summarised in a common center. There are municipal monitoring towers, private towers (for mobile operators) and those of the Forest Enterprises, which are being built under the RDP. They are not coordinated and the signal from them is of different frequency, some remain unsupported when the warranty period of the project on which they were created passes“.
“At present, there is no known remote sensor that can perform an analysis of fire severity on the ground, and field assessments are required, which is more resource-intensive and time-consuming“.
“The currently available monitoring tools (software and real-time climate data frequency) of a forest fire are not effective in predicting the behaviour of the fire in during the emergency phase. This fact limits decision-making based primarily on the expert knowledge of the fire department. The emergence of the 6th generation fires where fire behaviour is different from that of traditional fires means that the decisions that can be made by commanders based on their experience is insufficient and even counterproductive in downdraft situations. The consequences of bad decisions can have serious consequences, not only in the goods that may be affected, but also in human lives of the emergency bodies“.