Key data

Duration: 42 months (start date: 1st october 2021)

Overall budget: 24 M €

Partners: 49 partners from the European Union, Brazil, Indonesia, and Australia

Goals

The SILVANUS project aims to prevent the threat and fight forest fires intelligently, improving forest resilience against climate change.

The main result of the project is the launch of a climate resilient forest management platform to prevent and mitigate forest fires. SILVANUS counts with experts in environmental, technological and social sciences and is supported by regional and national authorities responsible for forest fire management in their respective countries. The researchers and experts participating in SILVANUS will help civil protection authorities to effectively monitor forest resources, assess biodiversity, manage more accurate fire risk indicators, and promote the safety of local populations exposed to forest fires through regulation and awareness-raising campaigns.

Highlights

In the current climate crisis, forest fires are becoming more dangerous and more frequent. SILVANUS intends to offer a new technological solution to improve forest fire ignition preparedness and prevention. This will be achieved by integrating a big data processing framework capable of analysing heterogeneous data sources, such as climate models, meteorological data and earth observation tools, developing intelligent models for fire ignition. These models will be further complemented by the use of insitu environmental sensors such as CCTV and multispectral imaging solutions to develop a set of advanced detection and response tools. SILVANUS will also introduce sensor-based technology that uses a wireless network to coordinate unmanned vehicles - aerial and ground robots - supporting first response to fire.

The innovations of the SILVANUS project will be implemented and demonstrated in eight regions of EU Member States (Portugal, France, Italy, Slovakia, Greece, Czech Republic, Croatia and Romania). Additional demonstrations will also be carried out across Indonesia, Brazil and Australia.

To ensure the long-term impact of the SILVANUS results, the project will include policy recommendations on forest management, recommended soil rehabilitation strategies, and natural resource restoration services.

SILVANUS focuses on three components of firefighting: prevention and preparedness, detection and response, and restoration and adaptation.

Role EDP NEW, LABELEC and EDP Produção

EDP, through EDP NEW, manages the Portuguese pilot of SILVANUS, which will demonstrate monitoring activities, integration of heterogeneous data, implementation of nature-based solutions to mitigate the occurrence of ignitions, fire protection in critical infrastructures (electricity and water), collaboration in the development of technological solutions, development of communication between IoT devices and the platform, demonstration and testing of the SILVANUS platform, stakeholder management, dissemination and exploitation of project results, among other activities.

EDP NEW is the partner responsible for coordinating the Portuguese pilot, in which Águas de Portugal, Instituto Superior Técnico and Terraprima participate, in addition to EDP Produção and LABELEC.

In SILVANUS, EDP LABELEC will participate with the modelling of forest fires in the vicinity of power lines. LABELEC will also participate in the Portuguese pilot using drones to acquire and process images and data. This activity is enhanced by LABELEC's long experience in visual recognition with equipped drones.

In SILVANUS, EDP Produção will participate with its long experience in critical infrastructures, namely those located in dam reservoirs, contributing to the development of the platform, providing data and testing the results.

Partners