Since the beginning of 2025, there have been 1,478 fires in Europe, accounting for 353,862 hectares of land burned and 11.45 million tons of CO2 emissions, causing social disruptions and economic losses.
More intense wildfires, occurring in new places and outside fire seasons, have become a pressing challenge across Europe and the world. But there are promising, advanced technologies to support firefighters on the ground. One of those innovations emerged in 2019, when two experienced firefighters created HoZe Solutions, leveraging their own expertise and knowledge to develop innovative protection systems that combine smart software and advanced hardware. HoZe Solutions was also one of the selected innovations from the FIRE-RES Open Innovation Challenge (OIC) launched in 2023.
HoZe Solutions dashboard: empowering people with better tools and knowledge
Landscapes across Europe present a mosaic of forests, agricultural areas, residential properties, and industrial sites of varying sizes, all amidst the challenges posed by climate change. Landowners, communities, and industries will do well to prepare and respond promptly when flames approach their properties. According to Martin Hofmann, CEO of HoZe Solutions, it is important to have defensible space to protect those assets. But it is not always simple for a property owner to visualise and create this space. Considering this, HoZe Solutions created a visualisation tool.
HoZe Solutions offers a software dashboard designed to help property managers evaluate wildfire risks and plan effective defences. This tool presents a heatmap displaying various assets, such as homes, farms, buildings, or critical facilities. Users can examine their assets via the visualisation dashboard, which shows the likely wildfire exposure level. With this information, communities and property owners are empowered to take action and establish defensible spaces around their assets.
The dashboard also generates simulations of potential wildfires, taking into account factors such as vegetation, topography, and weather, as well as the effectiveness of containment strategies. These simulations are based on experimental fire tests and data from controlled burns, providing cost estimates and fire suppression strategies. But having a defensible space is just one of the prevention actions needed to fight wildfires. The company has also developed a system that is ready to take action.
