To enhance the ability to protect critical infrastructures located in the forest, rePLANt consortium, by University of Coimbra and whereness, is developing a forest fire propagation simulator integrated with a GIS solution, which aims to support the protection of the infrastructures located in critical places susceptible to rural fires.
They presented the advances made, with a brief demonstration of forest fire propagation simulations which illustrate the models of fire behaviour and wind dispersion developed.
The solution is based on a video surveillance system that sends alarms about detected occurrences, their location, the weather conditions at the time and the potential for fire event propagation.
This information, besides being considered in the dispatch and network operation rooms, for gas and electricity, as input for the management of these energy transport systems, is also sent to the field teams.
In the demo of this solution, partners proved that it is possible to predict fire behaviour by inserting the variables that characterize it and the context in which it occurs.
At the moment that we are facing increasingly longer periods of extreme dry due to climate change and, consequently, major fire events, this technological solution shows itself capable of improving the protection of the critical infrastructures presented in the forest. In addition, it has been scientifically proven to be highly cost-effective, as the investment applied to this kind of system can usually be recovered eight times, resulting in savings in material damage and forest losses.
