Forestry is amongst the industries most impacted by the push towards Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation.
Wood Central has reported that AI is increasingly used to assist with planting, carbon monitoring and real-time biodiversity reporting.
Now, AI sensors that can sniff out a wildfire in minutes are being trialled in Brandenburg, the German region most hit by forest fires.
In the heart of Eberswalde forest, northeast of Berlin, Jürgen Müller coaxed flames out of a fire pit using highly flammable pine branches as kindling.
It didn’t take long before the first wisps of smoke started curling into the air.
The 69-year-old retired forestry expert was testing a green-and-black device powered by solar energy that can detect the gases emitted during the earliest smouldering phase of a fire.
The devices were created two years ago by the Berlin startup Dryad Networks, which Müller co-founded, and come equipped with ultra-sensitive gas sensors developed by German engineering firm Bosch.
These devices come fitted with ultra-sensitive sensors powered with AI learning, which can differentiate between smoke of various types and alert authorities accordingly.
“In 10 to 15 minutes, we can detect an incipient fire before it becomes an open fire,” Müller said, adding that it was way faster than traditional systems involving monitoring through cameras.
He says that when a wildfire is detected, the data is immediately relayed to a cloud-based monitoring system and local authorities are alerted.
As more and more nations experience a surge in deadly wildfire incidents, the makers of the device believe their sales will shoot up. Dryad Networks says ten countries, including the US, Greece and Spain, are already experimenting with the device.
The startup sold 10,000 devices last year and hopes to install at least 120 million devices by the end of 2030.
Raimund Engel, Brandenburg’s forest fire protection officer, has hailed the devices as a useful addition to the current visual detection method.
“Weather conditions in the forest-rich area of Eberswalde are very similar to some Mediterranean regions”, Engel said, “with periods of drought and temperatures that sometimes reach up to 40 degrees celsius.”
He added: “The faster we detect fires, the quicker firefighters can be on the scene, so the intervention can greatly help authorities to prevent disasters before they rage out of control.”
