The Problem
Forest fires worldwide plague is repeating every year with the same devastating effects. During the period 1980-2004, in the most affected European countries, that is the Mediterranean basin from Greece to Portugal, more than 12 millions hectares had burnt only, approximately an area as large as Greece itself. Early detection and accurate monitoring remain the most important objectives to achieve to improve the effects of extinguishing operation, to increase the probability of fire confining, and thus to reduce damage to people and goods, and also costs for emergency management.

State of the art technology for fire detection, essentially based on infrared cameras and remote sensing, seems to be inadequate for a large scale forest fire long term monitoring, as it cannot guarantee, at low costs, both spatial and time continuity.

Project Objectives
EU-FIRE project has the objective to design a really modern and efficient fire monitoring system and to develop a prototype in order to demonstrate the feasibility of a large scale forest fires long term monitoring, an thus the way to improve the quality of life in European wooded areas. To be really “modern” and “efficient” such system shall guarantee a wide area in-situ monitoring of relevant areas at affordable costs, and a complete decision support throughout fire emergencies, through:

(a) the accurate and continuous surveillance and forecasting, where continuity shall be intended both in time and in space,
(b) the immediate detection of fire beginnings,
(c) the monitoring of the fire evolution, even on more fire fronts, and
(d) the exchange of information from fire fronts in a safe, timely and reliable way.

Methodology and Key Technologies
The main technological gaps in the field of fire surveillance and monitoring systems shall be filled by the integration and the experimentation of innovative optoelectronic and acoustics technologies.

The EU-FIRE integrated prototype will be based on:

(a) a microphones system for volumetric scanning, contributing to give a deeper monitoring of forest safety through the possibility to detect and track fires from the beginning by recognizing of its acoustic emission spectrum (i.e. its “noise”),

(b) fibre optic sensors networks for the detection of changes in the parameters associated fire, such as temperature and gaseous emission.

(c) a user interface represented by a field console, able to integrate data from acoustic and optoelectronic sensors as well as data of existing measurement stations.  

Fibre optics represent a unique tool that permits to realize extremely capillary multiparameter monitoring networks to analyse real-time phenomena, and to realize monitoring rings around sensible structures, with costs competitive with respects of traditional technologies.

On the other hand, acoustic systems for volumetric scanning represent a new frontier in the application of fire monitoring, but they have been successfully validated for long range aircraft detection and identification.

In particular, the following issues will be faced:

• Mathematical characterization of fire acoustic emission, that depends on several factors, such as environmental condition and the fuel (i.e. the particular kind of wood), and that strongly influence the design of the acoustic system;
• Mathematical characterization of thermal and static coupling between fires and fibre optic sensors, in order to provide a specific design for the fibre optic sensor network and for the related optoelectronic system;
• Design of the EU-FIRE monitoring system and Development of the prototype for demonstration, prepared for the integration with already existing satellite and terrestrial data.

Expected Results
A 8-month field testing campaign, to be held on at least two different sites, in Italy and Portugal, will end the activities providing projects scientific and technological results that will lead, in the mid-term, to the provision of improved performance detection systems, and, in long term, to the establish of a common European model for forest fire monitoring.

Therefore, the primary exploitation routes of the EU-FIRE project will be directed towards:

(a) the industrialisation of a new Forest Fire Monitoring System, able to perform early detection of fire beginnings in wide areas and protection of sensitive areas at risk of safety, and
(b) the launch of a new service of permanent wide area forest fire monitoring, featuring lower costs in spite of increased safety and environmental care.