Spain is the European country that is most affected by forest fires. This ecological threat devastates huge areas of forest every year. In 2018, about 30,000 hectares destroyed by fire were accounted for in 7,143 fires.
Climate change, drought or the progressive abandonment of rural areas are some of the factors that favor the appearance of fires. To prevent their occurrence, detection as immediate as possible is essential, and for this, technological innovations are put at the service of forest rangers and emergency services.
Luis Rincón is Chief Officer of the Technical Unit of Extinction, Rescue and Prevention of the Fire Department of the Community of Madrid explains the need for the field of care due to the abandonment of the last decades: “Before, they grazed a lot, they had won in the mountains. and that made the whole bush, the whole undergrowth clean and healthy. At the moment in which the rural environment is abandoned, everything that is done to clean the forest has to be done by financing checkpoints that do this manual cleaning, which is tremendously ineffective if we compare it with a settled rural population. The moment there is a source of ignition, which can be lightning, or the hand of man, everything burns very quickly ”.
Since he was little, Luis fantasized about spending time in the woods, and today he can live out his childhood dream of being a forest ranger. Like him, many people have a sensitivity to nature and its care, and concern for the environment is also very present at Telefónica. Aware of the serious situation of forest fires, and as a result of this sensitivity, the idea arose of developing a pilot project that can contribute to the prevention of this type of fires and provide emergency services with an innovative technological tool: the Fire Drones project.
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Technician of the Infrastructure Center of Telefónica Spain, briefly explains what this project consists of: “The objective we pursue is to be able to provide means to the administrations that are in charge of fighting forest fires to make better decisions in the first moments, what can contribute to that an incipient fire does not evolve into a great fire “, he tells us.
Watchtowers for immediate detection
As we indicated, identifying a fire as quickly as possible is essential. For this reason, the telecommunications towers that Telefónica has distributed throughout the national territory provide a significant advantage. This infrastructure has more than 20,000 points where to place thermal sensors that allow monitoring large forest areas.
These thermal sensors installed in the telephone towers will be capable of detecting any possible source of fire in a perimeter of 15 km, thus providing considerable surveillance capacity in large natural spaces.
Drones go into action
Within these base stations, a hangar will be located where a drone will be housed, to which the thermal sensors send an alarm with the latitude and longitude, the exact location of the point where a fire may have started.
The drone moves autonomously to that point, surrounds the fire and transfers in real time all the information it collects, both optical and thermal, as well as parameters such as wind speed or temperature, to the emergency services.
The system will also allow the emergency control center to take control of the drone at any time to collect additional optical or thermal information and track the fire environment.
Once the mission is complete, the drone returns to its hangar and positions itself in it, automatically recharging to be available in case another flight is necessary. The very connectivity of the watchtowers makes this possible.
Real-time data communication
The university professor Fernando García is in charge of directing the project, and he belongs to the Carlos III University of Madrid, an institution that has developed the entire autonomous flight system and the interface. He gives us more technical details that explain how this technological device works.
The technology behind this drone has two parts: on the one hand, the hardware : different sensors built into the drone, including 4 temperature sensors that provide extra information about what is happening; a thermal camera that allows to measure the temperature of the detected focus; a normal camera to identify, for example, areas of possible expansion of the fire or access areas for emergency services; finally, different controllers of the drone that allow to know what the internal state of the equipment is.
“We were enthusiastic about the idea of making an innovative technological development that allows us to provide society with added value, such as an application of this style, which does not exist today and which allows us to see the state of a fire from the same moment in which it was produced ”, says Fernando.
“The information is processed within the drone itself: it has a built-in computer on board that receives the information from the cameras and encodes it so that it occupies a small size and can be transmitted to the base station. In addition, we have incorporated a movement model that allows us, from the base that is communicating with the drone, to change the trajectory and ask it to go to a certain point. In such a way that the operator, from the emergency control center, can make a special route for the drone to go to a specific area. And then the drone will always return to the predetermined path and to the base station, landing automatically in the hangar, ”adds Fernando.
The other part is the software for accessing the different sensors, as well as the connectivity for real-time data communication , based on Telefónica’s existing infrastructure. In addition to the University, other partners such as Divisek and Dronitec have been in charge of the autonomous recharging system for the drone and the services associated with the drone, respectively.
The hangar where the drone is sheltered while it is not flying has also been designed at this Madrid university. This structure allows the drone to be protected from the elements and it is there where it recharges automatically to be ready in case it is necessary to take flight again. This hangar has a simple design, very much in the style of a 3D printer, with different possibilities of vertical and horizontal movement , which will allow the structure to open so that the drone can take off.
The future: a fire extinguisher drone
This sophisticated technology is a very powerful tool for emergency services. But, given the obvious advantage of robotics, automation, and real-time data localization, will drones themselves be responsible for putting out fires in the future as well? Everything points to yes.
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez explains the fundamental advantage of this happening: “Currently, aerial means cannot operate at night and drones can operate in poor visibility. In addition, it must be taken into account that the extinction of forest fires from aerial means is one of the most dangerous activities that there is within the extinction. And with this solution we reduce the possibility of human victims ”.
An innovation full of hope
The emergency services have received the arrival of fire-fighting drones with great anticipation. An example is Carlos Novillo, Head of Emergencies of the 112 of the Community of Madrid, who will not hesitate to embrace this technology: “Without a doubt we believe that this technology will represent a revolution in the world of emergencies , not only in what is the immediate visualization of these emergencies, but when entering other parameters, such as thermal vision, which allows us to see these temperature contrasts, or to be able to see through smoke. It will also allow us to detect substances that can be emitted into the environment as a result of a fire or, for example, if an arsonist is leaving the area we will be able to detect it as well. All this will be able to contribute the technology of the drones. And for us, for those of us who work in emergencies, the arrival of new technologies is a before and after when it comes to designing increasingly effective systems for surveillance, control and management of emergencies “
The great hope is that once this development is commercialized, it is very possible that we will see even higher success rates in containing the wildfires.
“The technology is there and it has to help us. Professionals will surely have fewer risks when facing forest fires, and the moment we are more effective in fighting the fire, the entire population living in that environment will be much less threatened and will have greater comfort and higher quality. of life ” , concludes Luis Rincón.
