SILVANUS Citizen Engagement App available on Google Play and App Store

The SILVANUS app is now available for download on Google Play and App Store.

The mobile app is designed to empower citizens and provide them with tools in detecting or preventing wildfire, along with guidelines on how to prepare and stay informed during fire incidents.

Features of the app include educational resources, such as tips, quizzes and comprehensive guidelines on personal safety, protection and safekeeping the wellbeing of the community and the environment.

A key component of the app is the interactive map, where fire incidents may be reported with descriptions and optional photos.  Therefore, citizens are active contributors to the platform, and in line with SILVANUS and its goals, have the potential to assume a key role in wildfire management.

In the future, as the platform reaches its final development stages, these reports will be forwarded to proper authorities.

Join the SILVANUS app – the modern and innovative protector in the fight against extreme wildfire, for the benefit of forests and humankind.

Report from the Firelogue Working Group Meetings in Nea Makri, Greece

This week, SILVANUS representatives from Center for Security Studies (KEMEA), Agricultural University of Athens and Venaka TReLeaf attended the Firelogue Working Group meetings (Civil Protection, Environment, Infrastructure, Insurance and Societal) in Nea Makri, Greece.

This was an important milestone meeting for the EUFireProjectsUnited initiative, where the H2020 Innovation Action and Green Deal wildfire management projects – SILVANUS, TREEADS, FIRE-RES, FirEUrisk – showcased their results and new technological solutions in the prevention, detection, response and suppression of wildfires.

The working groups emphasised a holistic approach to wildfire management, where innovative technologies are supported by an integrated methodology, which takes the societal, infrastructure, and environmental impacts into account, with a particular emphasis on the effects of wildfire on local communities.

The agenda during the week also included a field trip visit to the Municipality of Rafina-Pikermi in North-Eastern Attica, which experienced and is still impacted by the consequences of the devastating wildfires of 2018.

SILVANUS would like to send their gratitudes to the Firelogue team for the organisation of the workshops, which will contribute to achieving the joint goals of wildfire risk management projects in the significant reduction of extreme wildfire and wildfire-related negative impacts.

7th SILVANUS Newsletter

Latest SILVANUS project newsletter is here. The main focus of this volume is on the visual aspects, such as posters, teasers for the citizen engagement app, and a special teaser for an animated video that is coming soon!

Take a closer look at:

🪧 Conclusion of the educational poster speed campaign
📱 Teaser of the citizen engagement app
📹Teaser of the animated video
🏅Gold medal won at the International Warsaw Invention Show

Modern and Innovative Protector against Extreme Wildfire – For the Benefit of Forests and Humankind

SILVANUS presented at the Eastern Mediterranean Wildland Urban Interface in Athens, Greece

SILVANUS was presetend at the Eastern Mediterranean Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Symposium, which took place at the Hellenic Ministry for Climate Crisis and Civil Protection in Athens, Greece on March 20th and 21st. The event was co-organised by the SILVANUS partner Center for Security Studies – KEMEA from Greece, and the Hellenic Ministry for Climate Crisis and Civil Protection.

As one of the emblematic Green Deal projects funded by the European Commission, SILVANUS was showcased as having solutions to the problem of wildfires in the EU. The symposium focused on the discussion of the WUI problem inside the framework of wildfires. The purpose of the meeting was to share lessons learned, best practices, technology, and institutional infrastructure for wildfire response and mitigation from the United States with countries surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean.

The EU research domain on wildfires and specifically on WUI areas was presented, along with various gaps and challenges on wildfires and WUI fires. Input was provided on EU incentives, giving intelligence on the recent wildfire projects in EU and identifying commonalities and differences in WUI areas in the US and Southern EU.

Problems that exist in WUI areas in the US, Greece and Cyprus were discussed, common issues and synergies were identified, and a substantial exchange of knowledge on results of SILVANUS was carried out.

SILVANUS Presented at the Secours Expo in Paris, France

SILVANUS Consortium partner International Emergency Firefighters (PUI), led by Philippe Besson and Iliana Korma, presented the project at the Secours Expo event in Paris on January 31st, 2024. The Secours Expo is an European trade fair dedicated to rescue, emergency care and risk prevention which unifies all pre-emergency professionals in France and all around Europe.

Among the audience present at the presentation and the round table, there were representatives from both public and private sector, such as civil protection, forest administration, volunteers, fire services, first responders, etc.

Components of the platform were introduced to stakeholders and important feedback was collected. Thank you to the organisers for hosting SILVANUS and for giving the project opportunity to share its results to a diverse audience in wildfire management.

SILVANUS Wins a Gold Medal at the International Warsaw Invention Show

At the International Warsaw Invention Show, organised by the The Association of Polish Inventors and Innovators, SILVANUS was presented by Consortium partner Main School of Fire Service (SGSP). The presentation was focused on project results, with an emphasis on the user products (UP) of the platform.

SILVANUS has received a gold medal for best invention. The goal of the event was to present inventions, outcomes and innovations of national and international projects with technical outputs in areas such as wildfire management.

This was another opportunity for SILVANUS to showcase its results in front of a diverse audience of stakeholders in areas of technological inventiveness. Project members wish to thank the organisers for this honour and occasion!

Behind SILVANUS Project: Human behaviour is the most difficult aspect to forecast on wildfire prevention

An interview with SILVANUS dissemination manager Lovorko Marić for the MAIA Project-funded blog Alter! – Alternative League for the Transition to European Resilience is available HERE.

The discussion revolves around how SILVANUS can contribute to wildfire prevention, the role of climate change in fire propagation, how citizens can play a key role in reducing the threat of fire, and which actions are taking place to improve land resilience.

The accompanying article elaborates on the summer wildfires of 2023, climate change effects, and the impact of human behaviour on causes, length and magnitude of these natural disasters.

6th SILVANUS Newsletter – Holiday Edition

The 6th SILVANUS Newsletter – the special holiday edition – covers the most important events and news from September to December 2023. It includes reports from pilot visits and exercises in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Australia, Romania, France, Greece and Italy. User products such as drones, ground robots, citizen engagement app and biodiversity app were thoroughly tested. Reports from dissemination events such as the Wildfire Risk Management Clustering Event and the Expert Group on Forest Fires are included, along with updates on the poster campaign and deliverables. It was an exciting and eventful year for the project, with many of the pilots successfully carried out. Much more to come in 2024!

The SILVANUS project team wishes you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! All the best for the holidays!

Modern and Innovative Protector against Extreme Wildfire – For the Benefit of Forests and Humankind

SILVANUS at the Wildfire Risk Management Project Clustering Event in Brussels

The highly anticipated Wildfire Risk Management Project Clustering Event, co-organised by Coordination and Support Action project Firelogue and Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network – DG ECHO at the European Commission, took place at the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels in front of a wide and diverse audience of wildfire management stakeholders.

The SILVANUS project team, led by project coordinator Michele Corleto and technical manager Krishna Chandramouli, has presented the results of the project with an emphasis on the development of user products and the implemented pilots so far in Croatia, Slovakia, France, Czechia, Greece, Italy, Romania, Indonesia and Australia.  Solutions are highlighted in the form of user products such as the Woode biodiversity app, the citizen engagement app, and the deployment of ground robots.

The event is also a crucial milestone in the #EUFireProjectsUnited initiative, where the wildfire risk management H2020 projects convene – SILVANUS, TREEADS, FIRE-RES and FirEURisk, to share their results and discuss possible synergies, which have the potential to significantly contribute to the achievement of Green Deal wildfire management goals.

SILVANUS Pilot Site Visit at the Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies in Brisbane, Australia

SILVANUS project is continuing its global activities around the world. After a successful pilot visit in Indonesia last week, the team made the 2nd international (non-EU) visit to Brisbane, Australia for a pilot demonstration of fire detection involving unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). 

The Australian pilot was organised by SILVANUS partner CSIRO – Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, at the Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies. At this location, ground robots were tested for investigating the terrain and smoke detection information to feed the SILVANUS platform data for the purpose of wildfire suppresion. IoT devices by SILVANUS partner Catalink were also providing information based on early signals of smoke in the forest.

The Robotics and Autonomous Systems Group’s facilities provided an ideal location for testing UGVs, which are one of the user products of the SILVANUS platform. Multiple ground robots were tested for smoke detection, sharing their acquired maps and adapting to new obstacles that were placed in their path (autonomous navigation and exploration).

The international campaign for SILVANUS has ended for 2023, with two pilots in Indonesia and Australia being successfully carried out. This has given vital input in the development of the platform, and the results will be disseminated soon.

Report from the International Conference on Information Technology (ICOIACT 2023) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

SILVANUS team attended today the 6th International Conference on Information Technology (ICOIACT 2023) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, organised by the Universitas AMIKOM Yogyakarta and co-sponsored by IEEE Indonesian Section.

Warm welcome and introduction speeches were made by Prof. Aris Junaidi, Head of LLDIKTI Region V Yogyakarta, general chair of ICOIACT Akhmad Dahlan, Rector of AMIKOM University Prof. Dr. Mohammad Suyanto, and Chair of IEEE Indonesia Section Gamantyo Hendrantoro.

The project was presented by the technical manager Krishna Chandramouli, with an emphasis on the conducted Indonesian pilot and the Woode biodiversity app. Thpresentation was well-received with Indonesian stakeholders and it produced a fruitful discussion on the applicability of SILVANUS platform to forest management in Indonesia, and on the long-term durability of the project’s results.

Other presentations at today’s conference included Topological Intelligence for Creative Robotics by Prof. Dr. Naoyuki Kubota from Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan, and Potential of Artificial Intelligence in Sustainable Peat Swamp Forest Management by Andi Muhammad Khadafi, the Head Officer of the Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park. Additional discussion followed on applying the citizen engagement app and IoT sensors of SILVANUS to Indonesian forests.

SILVANUS team wishes to thank its partner Universitas AMIKOM Yogyakarta for their impeccable organisation of the conference and the pilot visit, which gave the project a major and crucial stakeholder outreach and exposure.

SILVANUS Pilot Visit in Sebangau National Park, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

The SILVANUS pilot site visit in Indonesia took place this week, making it the first SILVANUS pilot location visit in the SILVANUS Consortium international/non-EU country. 7 pilot visits, exercises and demonstrations were already conducted this year in 7 EU Member States (Croatia, Slovakia, France, Romania, Italy, Czechia, Greece). Pilots will be demonstrated in Australia next week and Brazil next year, the other two international/non-EU countries of the SILVANUS Consortium, taking this globally ambitious project even further towards full realisation.

Organised by the Consortium member Universitas AMIKOM Yogyakarta, the first day of the Indonesian pilot on November 7th included a visit to the Regional Disaster Management Agency / Badan Penanggulangan Bencana Daerah (BPBD) in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, where the Indonesian disaster managers explained the methods, elaborated on the technology, and emphasised the logistical and operational challenges they face in the fight against extreme wildfire. This was followed by a visit to the fire site in Penda Barania, a location of the “underground” peat fire, which can cause challenges in suppressing the fire, since it spreads in the soil and can potentially release major quantities of carbon.

The final stop of the 1st day was the pilot site location in Sebangau National Park, at the Koran river, where project members reached the site in the pristine jungle by boat. The contributions of SILVANUS platform to biodiversity restoration in the area were discussed with the stakeholders, along with policy recommendation and technical modelling which would help firefighters, first responders and other stakeholders to assess the fire danger and reduce the threat.

The second day on November 8th included a meeting and workshop with the Indonesian authorities and stakeholders in Palangka Raya – the Central Kalimantan Environmental Authority, Sebangau National Park and Borneo Nature Foundation. Presentations were held by Indonesian experts on wildfire history in the region of Central Kalimantan and the Sebangau National Park, fire policy, suppression of peat fire, biodiversity data collection, and on the ways of rewetting, revegetation and revitalization of local livelihoods after an extreme wildfire incident. Fires were spreading in the region of Central Kalimantan, especially after El Niño weather occurrences in 2015, 2019 and 2023.

SILVANUS team members presented the user products and components of the platform (Woode app, citizen engagement app, decision-support system, open forest map, the platform dashboard). The project has made another important step in establishing a fruitful communication and collaboration with SILVANUS stakeholders from Indonesia in the fight against extreme wildfire. Needs and requirements of stakeholders were carefully taken into consideration, and the platform was presented as a tool to efficiently prevent and detect wildfires, and to recommend policy for wildfire restoration.

SILVANUS Presented at the MEDEA Event in Athens

SILVANUS was presented at the MEDEA project final event titled “Current and Foreseen Security Operations: Challenges and Security Gaps” by SILVANUS team members Theofanis Orphanoudakis and Despina Anastasopoulos from Netcompany-Intrasoft, with an emphasis on the decision-support system of the platform. The event took place in Athens, Greece on October 30th and 31st. MEDEA project focused on the Mediterranean and Black Sea practitioners’ network capacity building for effective response to emerging security challenges.

SILVANUS Tabletop Exercise in Chalkida, Greece

A tabletop exercise was conducted on October 31st in Chalkida on the Evia Island in Central Greece, organised by SILVANUS project partner Region of Central Greece. The exercise has brought together the first responders from Greece and other important external stakeholders, such as the Fire Brigade, Hellenic Police, Greek Army, and Coast Guard, as well as various local authorities and forest services. The primary objective of the exercise was to establish effective communication and collaboration between the first responders and the User Products of SILVANUS. By demonstrating the UPs, this exercise aimed to identify potential challenges, gaps, and needs of the first responders, and to find appropriate solutions to address them.

Thank you to Region of Central Greece and the SILVANUS team for implementing the exercise.

SILVANUS at the Policy Event ““Towards a Fire-resilient Europe: Can we do better?” at the European Parliament

SILVANUS team members Georgios Sakkas and Nikolaos Kalapodis participated on behalf of the project partner Center for Security Studies (KEMEA)  in the policy event “Towards a Fire-resilient Europe: Can we do better?” organised by FIRE-RES at the European Parliament with MEPs Ulrike Müller, Jordi Sole Ferrando and Anna Deparnay-Grunenberg, with Green Deal Project Officer on wildfires Nicolas Faivre.

Intereseting discussions were launched for improving EU resilience on forest fires, with the enhancement of multi-functional forest approach and preventive actions against wildfires being the hot topic.

SILVANUS Czech Pilot Exercise in Krásná

SILVANUS has implemented its fifth pilot exercise in the municipality of Krásná, Czechia, located in the Frýdek-Místek District in the Moravian-Silesian Region, 42 kilometres from Ostrava in the east of the country.

The main organiser of the pilot exercise was the SILVANUS team member Fire Rescue Service of Moravian-Silesian Region. User products of the SILVANUS platform that were tested at the site were: the ground robots by 3MON that simulated extinguishing fires, transporting wounded and cargo over uneven forest terrain, the Woode biodiversity app by Venaka TReLeaf, along with drones (survey and data-sharing), mobile app and SILVANUS Dashboard, forest-fire detection system, forest firefighting appliances and equipment, with support by SILVANUS partners Center for Security Studies (KEMEA) and Institute of Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences.

SILVANUS French Pilot Exercise in Limoges and St Sylvestre

SILVANUS Consortium member International Emergency Firefighters (PUI) has successfully organised the French pilot exercise on September 29th and 30th. 

The pilot, conducted in the commune of St Sylvestre, Haute-Vienne department, region Nouvelle-Acquitane in central France, focused on showcasing the user products of the SILVANUS platform. The project was introduced at the Limoges City Hall on September 29th, where the citizen engagement app was presented and an exhibition was displayed on SILVANUS objectives and outputs. 🪧

The pilot exercise took place on September 30th, where the platform user products were tested, such as the ground robots from SILVANUS partner 3MON, the Woode biodiversity app from Venaka TReLeaf, the citizen engagement app by Massive Dynamic Sweden, the fire detection IoT device from Catalink Ltd, the fire detection based on social sensing from Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH), in front of more than 70 partners from 10 countries.

More on pilot exercises to come soon.

5th SILVANUS Newsletter

The 5th SILVANUS Newsletter covers the most important events and news from May to September 2023. It includes a report from the General Assembly meeting in Bucharest, a teaser of SILVANUS platform user products and the citizen engagement app, and an overview on dissemination events, educational activities and submitted Deliverables.

“Security Architecture in the SILVANUS Project” Paper presented at the ENS Workshop in Benevento, Italy 

SILVANUS was presented at the 6th International Workshop on Emerging Network Security (ENS 2023), co-organised by SILVANUS consortium partner Warsaw University of Technology (WUT), as part of the 18th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2023), in Benevento, Italy, on August 29th.

SILVANUS team members Natan Orzechowski, Wojciech Mazurczyk and Krzysztof Cabaj from WUT presented the paper “Security Architecture in the SILVANUS Project”, which is a joint SILVANUS scientific publication between Warsaw University of Technology, ITTI and Netcompany-Intrasoft.

The paper is available here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3600160.3605082

The ENS 2023 was a great opportunity to present the security architecture of SILVANUS platform to approximately 50 participants in the area of network security academia and industry.

Opening of SILVANUS Poster and Video Exhibition at the Croatian Firefighting Museum in Varaždin, Croatia

SILVANUS consortium partner Croatian Firefighting Association has opened a poster, video and equipment exhibition on the objectives and outputs of the project on Saturday, August 19th 2023, at the Croatian Firefighting Museum in the town of Varaždin, Croatia. This was organised at the time of Špancirfest 2023, an annual cultural festival in Varaždin that receives hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

The organisation of the exhibition was implemented by Vedran Runjić, the curator of the Croatian Firefighting Museum. The opening of the exhibition was, among others, attended by the honorary president of the Varaždin County Firefighting Association Zvonko Biškup and the County Firefighting Secretary Zvonko Videc, the City of Varaždin Firefighting Commander Ivica Labaš, and the Varaždin Firefighting Volunteer Society President Radovan Martinec. SILVANUS was introduced by Lovorko Marić from Micro Digital Ltd., the project’s dissemination manager.

The exhibition features posters on SILVANUS objectives and outputs, the SILVANUS promotional video and the news and interview coverage from the Croatian pilot exercise that took at place at the Training Centre of Šapjane in April this year.

The SILVANUS exhibition will be displayed at the Croatian Firefighting Museum in Varaždin, Croatia until the end of the year. 👩‍🚒 🔥

SILVANUS Presented at the MAIA Resilience EU: Wildfires and Forest Management Webinar

SILVANUS project was presented and discussed at the MAIA Project-organised webinar on wildfires and forest management, together with other wildfire management H2020 projects SAFERS and Firelogue. MAIA project focuses on providing and implementing a set of effective measures that facilitate a wider dissemination, communications, and interconnection of completed and on-going EU climate change research projects.

The focus of the SILVANUS presentation by Lovorko Marić, the SILVANUS dissemination manager, was on the objectives and outcomes of the project, focusing on the recent successful promotional campaigns and pilot exercises in Croatia and Slovakia. A fruitful discussion focused on the lessons learned and on the possible synergies of wildfire management projects.

SILVANUS presented as a Success Story at the Green Deal Projects Webinar

SILVANUS was presented as a success story at the Green Deal Projects Support Office online webinar – Presenting the Green Deal Call projects: Progress, success stories and Q&A, as part of the Network of Multipliers.

Lovorko Marić, the SILVANUS dissemination manager, presented the successful implementation of two pilots in Croatia and Slovakia, along with the accompanying educational and promotional campaigns (with a focus on the poster exhibition in Rijeka, Croatia), to a wide pool of stakeholders.

The participants included coordinators and dissemination managers of a number of Green Deal H2020 projects, who presented their own success stories.

A fruitful discussion followed, finding interesting synergy points between the projects, which may lead to other initiatives that will bring benefits in the area of biodiversity and climate change. 🌳

Report from the SILVANUS Citizen Engagement Workshop in Thessaloniki, Greece

As part of the high dissemination season, the results of the SILVANUS project were presented at the Citizen Engagement Workshop in Thessaloniki, Greece. The workshop was organised by SILVANUS partner Hellenic Rescue Team.

The objectives of the workshop were:

🌳 To increase knowledge and understanding of the causes, impacts, and management of forest fires
🔥 To raise awareness and educate the citizens about forest fires and their impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, climate, and human communities.
🤝To promote collaboration and networking among participants

The workshop was open to the public and attended by 95 participants. SILVANUS was therefore presented in Thessaloniki to civil society in conjunction with a more targeted stakeholder group, which consisted of local civil protection authorities (Municipality Civil Protection Department, Fire Service, the local Airforce Combat Wing (firefighting aircrafts), Thessaloniki Forestry, Reforestation Authority), Civil Protection Volunteer Organizations and journalists.

This was a great opportunity to bring the SILVANUS platform closer to some of its most important potential users and stakeholders!

SILVANUS presented at the SpliTech Conference

As part of the high dissemination season, outputs of SILVANUS were presented at the SpliTech Conference on International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies in Bol, Croatia.

Georgia Christodoulou from Catalink Ltd has presented the SILVANUS paper on the Advancement of an Integrated Technological Platform for Wildfire Management through Edge Computing, with an emphasis on the presentation of the fire detection IoT device. Along with Catalink, Atos, Venaka TReLeaf and Micro Digital Ltd. were SILVANUS consortium partners included in the writing of the paper.

The description of the fire detection IoT user product is available here.

Thank you to SpliTech and the University of Split for the invitation!

Report from the SILVANUS General Assembly Meeting in Bucharest

The SILVANUS project team has assembled for a General Assembly meeting in Bucharest, Romania on the 20th and 21st of June.

The user product components – the cornerstones of the SILVANUS platform – were demonstrated to the team and continuously improved after constructive feedback. Discussions were made on the pilots that will soon be organised not only in partner EU countries, but also in Indonesia, Brazil and Australia.

The SILVANUS team is approximately halfway through the project now, looking at the results and outcomes so far for a successful evolution of the project in the future. We send greetings to all of our stakeholders and readers!

Modern and Innovative Protector against Extreme Wildfire, For the Benefit of Forests and Humankind

SILVANUS Awareness Raising Programme for Students in Italy

SILVANUS project is continuing with its educational campaigns on the field!

SILVANUS partner ASSET Puglia – Regional Strategic Agency for Sustainable Development in Apulia Region has undertaken an educational awareness-raising programme in Italy for the prevention, control, and recovery from forest fires.

The ASSET working group, together with the Civil Protection volunteers conducted lectures together with practical activities, aimed at learning:

📜 The guidelines of the SILVANUS project
🌳 The pilot area of the National Park Gargano (one of 12 SILVANUS pilot areas) together with its characteristic climatic and environmental factors
🔥 Fuel models and the basic concepts of forecasting, preventing and actively fighting forest fires
👀 The production of a good practice guide to avoid, spot and fight them correctly.

Education for the prevention of wildfires to a wide pool of citizens, with an emphasis on students, is a crucial component of the project.

Modern and Innovative Protector against Extreme Wildfire
For the Benefit of Forests and Humankind

SILVANUS Presentation at the ISCRAM 2023 Conference in Omaha, USA

Members of the SILVANUS team – Zoltán Balogh and Emil Gatial from Institute of Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, and Kayvan Yousefi from University of Borås – have presented the project and three scientific papers at the ISCRAM 2023 conference in Omaha, United States of America, focusing on:

🛰️ Communication Protocol for using Nontraditional Information Sources between First Responders and Citizens during Wildfires
🤝 Citizen Engagement in Wildfire Management: Needs, Challenges, Methods and Framework
🛨 Coordination of Drones Swarm for Wildfire Monitoring

This was a major joint scientific publication undertaking by the SILVANUS team, featuring partners from Institute of Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, University of Borås, Fincons Group, ITTI, Technical University of Zvolen, RiniGARD , Venaka TReLeaf, 3MON and Thales

SILVANUS  is dedicated to global dissemination and scientific research. Much more to come on the scientific contribution of SILVANUS!

SILVANUS Video – EU Green Week 2023 Webinar

For the EU Green Week 2023, SILVANUS project is approximately in the middle point of its three-and-a-half ambitious journey to develop an integrated technological and information platform for wildfire management.

The 2-hour webinar shows the progress in the development of the SILVANUS platform with a detailed depiction of its technological components (user products), a report from the implementation of first two SILVANUS pilots in Croatia and Slovakia, a close look at the citizen engagement app, and a comprehensive overview of the citizen engagement programme, featuring the poster promotional campaigns.

The event was co-organised and presented by SILVANUS partners University of Applied Sciences Velika Gorica, Croatian Firefighting Association, RiniGARD, Massive Dynamic Sweden, University of Borås, 3MON, Venaka TReLeaf and Micro Digital Ltd.

Modern and Innovative Protector against Extreme Wildfire, For the Benefit of Forests and Humankind

Wildfire Management Innovation and Policies Workshop at RISE-SD Conference in Rhodes, Greece

To conclude the main activities at the RISE-SD 2023 Conference this week, SILVANUS was featured at the Wildfire Management Innovation and Policies workshop, consisting of three panels and moderated by George Eftychidis from Satways Ltd and Claudia Berchtold, the coordinator of Firelogue.

Georgios Sakkas from Center for Security Studies (KEMEA) discussed the outputs of SILVANUS at two of the panels. The first panel focused on the holistic approach and integrated management of landscape wildfires. The aim was to provide a better understanding of the concepts and terms related to wildfire management used by both national authorities and the European Commission. The (chronologically) third one was focused on the science and technology contribution to wildfire management, where innovative solutions – such as the SILVANUS platform – were discussed.

The second panel focused on the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations Wildfire Prevention Action Plan, and it featured Andrea Majlingova from Technical University in Zvolen as part of the SILVANUS team, along with an appearance by Cristina Brailescu from DG-ECHO. The actions of the plan were discussed to use scientific know-how and research to explore new areas of wildfire prevention.

The panel also featured an appearance and contributions from Nicolas Faivre from European Research Executive Agency (REA).

The discussion between the SILVANUS representatives and partners of wildfire management projects Firelogue, FirEURisk, SAFERS and TREEADS was fruitful, discussing on how the collaboration can advance the effectiveness of technological solutions and the approach toward citizens in wildfire prevention.

SILVANUS is very much looking forward to continuing the collaboration in order to maximise the impacts of all of the projects’ outputs. More to come…

Report from the RISE-SD Security and Defense Conference

As part of the high dissemination season, the SILVANUS project was presented today at the RISE-SD Security and Defense 2023 Conference. Lovorko Marić, the SILVANUS dissemination manager, presented a general overview of the project and its current status with a particular emphasis on the implemented pilots in Croatia and Slovakia, and on the user products of the SILVANUS platform.

Nikolaos Kalapodis from the Centre for Security Studies – KEMEA presented the EU sustainable forest management and wildfire policies and practices as part of the project’s research.

Konstantinos Demestichas from the Agricultural University of Athens focused on describing the methods and technical approaches when measuring forest resilience against wildfire and climate change.

The conference also features a very special SILVANUS booth, with promotional video footage from the Croatian and Slovak pilots, the presentation of the citizen engagement app, along with dissemination material such as posters, flyers, and the roll-up banner.

SILVANUS – Modern and Innovative Protector against Extreme Wildfire, For the Benefit of Forests and Humankind

SILVANUS at the CUAV, UAV & ROBOTICS Show in Čakovec, Croatia

The high dissemination season of SILVANUS has begun! Today, SILVANUS partners Venaka TReLeaf and RiniGARD have attended the CUAV, UAV & ROBOTICS Show in Čakovec, Croatia. Technical manager Krishna Chandramouli has presented the project at the Robotics and Technologies session, with an emphasis on the innovative protection using UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) and UGV (unmanned ground vehicle) technologies.

SILVANUS – Modern and Innovative Protector against Extreme Wildfire, For the Benefit of Forests and Humankind

The 4th SILVANUS Newsletter

The 4th SILVANUS newsletter, covering the period from January to April 2023, is now available for download.

This was a very active period for the project. Topics of the newsletter include SILVANUS receiving the Gold Medal and the best Invention Award at the IPITEX Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, the summary of the exciting poster educational and promotional campaigns, including the one in the City of Rijeka, Croatia, which was introduced by the Mayor of Rijeka Marko Filipović.

The newsletter features reports on the implemented pilot exercises in Croatia and Slovakia, and the overview of recently submitted Deliverables, along with a preview of the European Broadband Competence Offices video on SILVANUS.

SILVANUS – Modern and Innovative Protector against Extreme Wildfire, For the Benefit of Forests and Humankind

Report from the SILVANUS Pilot Exercise in Slovakia

The SILVANUS trial period continued this week with the implementation of the pilot in Slovakia, in the mountainous Pol’ana region in Central Slovakia. The goal of the Slovak pilot was to demonstrate early detection of fire and smoke, followed by the quick and efficient deployment of firefighters, fire trucks, drones, robots, and helicopters until the fire was extinguished, as a trial demonstration in the development of the SILVANUS platform.

SILVANUS partners TUZVO, 3MON, UISAV, FRS MB, PLAMEN, ITTI, ASFOR, SGSP, THALES, EXUS, EDP and VTG worked closely on the implementation of the pilot, which was initiated with the demonstration of a fire and its subsequent systematic detection. The information about the fire (location, link to camera footage) was sent to the operation centre. This followed with a deployment of drones from the Slovak Academy of Sciences, after which firefighters (under the Slovak Ministry of Interior) and the M17 helicopter (provided by the Slovak Ministry of Defence) were navigated and monitored.

Ground robots supplied by 3MON assisted in the transfer of heavy materials and equipment, putting out the fire with a water gun in a complex and hard-to-reach terrain under adverse weather conditions. The robot demonstrated five or six water spray methods. The uniqueness of the robot operation was in the ability to generate multiple types of water flow to counteract the spread of wildfire. A Bambi bucket was attached to the M17 helicopter and was used to deploy large quantities of water to the most active wildfire spots.

With the successful implementation of the 2nd SILVANUS pilot (the 1st one took place in Croatia on the 18th and 19th of April) and its integration of technologies with the deployment of forces, important data was accumulated for the development of the SILVANUS platform.

Report from the First SILVANUS Pilot Exercise in Croatia

SILVANUS has initiated the 2023 pilot trial period with the implementation of the Croatian pilot exercise on the 18th and 19th of April at the Training Centre of Šapjane (Municipality of Matulji), located approximately 20 kilometres from the City of Rijeka. Rijeka is Croatia’s biggest seaport and its central street was the site of the SILVANUS poster promotional campaign, which took place between the 3rd and 12th of April.

The main organiser of the pilot exercise was the Croatian Firefighting Association, a member of the SILVANUS consortium, accompanied by SILVANUS partners 3MON, Catalink, ASFOR Romania, University of Applied Sciences Velika Gorica, RiniGARD, Micro Digital, and SILVANUS technical manager Krishna Chandramouli from Venaka TReLeaf.

The pilot exercise was introduced by Chief Firefighting Commander of the Croatian Firefighting Association Slavko Tucaković, the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County Firefighting Commander Mladen Šćulac, the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County Prefect Zlatko Komadina, and Head of Municipality Matulji Vedran Kinkela.

The exercise included the demonstration of edge (IoT) devices for fire detection by Catalink, the use of ground robots provided by 3MON and introduced by Simona Kalinovska, the use of Mesh in the Sky technology provided by RiniGARD to establish on-demand communication channels to transmit images/videos collected from the remote locations, and the involvement of more than a hundred firefighters from the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County and the City of Zagreb.

An exercise of wildfire suppression was executed with the help of ground and air forces, use of video surveillance, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), ground robots, with a special emphasis on modern satellite communication systems. The purpose was to verify the operations done by firefighting forces in an open space, applying various tactical approaches with the suppression of fire, checking whether the connection systems are functioning, as well as the overview of road network and its interconnectivity.

More to come on the results of the exercise!

1 pilot implemented in 2023 for SILVANUS – 11 to go in 10 countries!

Report from the Opening of the SILVANUS Poster Exhibition in Rijeka, Croatia

The SILVANUS educational poster exhibition, organised by SILVANUS Partner Hrvatska vatrogasna zajednica (Croatian Firefighting Association), and sponsored by the City of Rijeka, has opened today at 10am CET on the main pedestrian street of Korzo in Rijeka, Croatia.

The exhibition features 10 two-sided bilingual (Croatian and English) posters, focusing on:

🌳 The main activities and objectives of SILVANUS

🤝 Key messages and advice for citizens in the fight against extreme wildfire

📱 Annoucement of the citizen engagement mobile app

👩‍🚒 Description of Croatian Firefighting Association activities in SILVANUS

The formal opening of the exhibition was led by the Mayor of Rijeka Marko Filipović, the Deputy Prefect of Primorje-Gorski Kotar County Vojko Braut, the Chief Firefighting Commander Slavko Tucaković, and the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County Firefighting Commander Mladen Šćulac.

Objectives of the project were discussed, along with the upcoming SILVANUS pilot exercise in the Training Centre of Šapjane, which will take place 20 kilometres from the City of Rijeka on the 18th and 19th of April.

The exhibition can be visited on Korzo in Rijeka between the 3rd and 12th of April.

SILVANUS wishes to thank the Croatian Firefighting Association and the City of Rijeka for this honour and opportunity to introduce SILVANUS to a large number of citizens, and to invite these stakeholders to participate in the development of our platform. The summer is coming and the region of Rijeka and Primorje-Gorski Kotar County may face new challenges in the fight against wildfire. SILVANUS hopes to significantly contribute in the mitigation and prevention of forest fire.

Announcement of the SILVANUS Poster Exhibition in Rijeka

SILVANUS posters, featuring the description of project goals and key messages on raising awareness in the fight against extreme wildfire, will be exhibited in the Adriatic town of Rijeka, Croatia, on the main central street Korzo, between the 3rd and 12th of April 2023. The posters will also show how citizen engagement can provide a crucial input in the development of the SILVANUS platform. The exhibition is organised by SILVANUS partner Croatian Firefighting Association, under the sponsorship of the City of Rijeka.

Two examples of the posters are highlighted below.

The SILVANUS Poster Educational Campaign Continues

Citizen engagement is a vital branch in the development of our platform!

From Hellenic Rescue Team and SYNTHESIS Center for Research & Education come the educational SILVANUS posters in the fight against extreme wildfire.

SILVANUS wins the Gold Medal and the IFIA Best Invention Award

The SILVANUS consortium has received the Gold Medal and the IFIA Best Invention Award for the Integrated Technological and Information Platform at the IPITEx 2023 (International Intellectual Property, Invention, Innovation and Technology Exhibition, organised by the National Research Council of Thailand) in Bangkok, Thailand, on Thailand Inventors’ Day 2023.

The exhibition was an Innovation Event organised by the International Federation of Inventors’ Association. The project was presented during the exhibition by SILVANUS partner Main School of Fire Service (SGSP), with an emphasis on SGSP’s scope of work. SGSP was represented by prof. dr. Michał Szota, and the award was handed by the IFIA President Alireza Rastegar.

The exhibition featured more than 1,500 inventions from 30 countries, and this was a wonderful opportunity to show the results of the project to a wide pool of stakeholders!

SILVANUS – Modern and Innovative Protector against Extreme Wildfire,
For the Benefit of Forests and Humankind

The SILVANUS Poster Educational Campaign is Launched

Citizen engagement is a vital branch in the development of our platform!

SILVANUS team is proud to introduce the citizen engagement educational campaign that will focus on sharing and disseminating key messages of the project, along with the general guidelines for extreme wildfire prevention and suppression.

Throughout 2023 and beyond, SILVANUS will share a series of posters with successive displays on a biweekly basis (not including special event dates) where the key messages for citizens and stakeholders will be summarized. Stakeholder outreach is a crucial component of the project, since the SILVANUS platform aims to be as user-friendly and accessible as possible to a wide pool of stakeholders and citizens. Only an inclusive and all-encompassing platform can lead to sustainable and concrete fulfillment of goals in the fight against extreme wildfire.

The first poster depicts a brief description of the SILVANUS objectives and a description of its three phases (prevention and preparedness, detection and response, forest restoration policies), while the second focuses on the most common causes of wildfire.

Special thanks to SILVANUS partners University of Boras, Croatian Firefighting Association, Massive Dynamic Sweden, Micro Digital Ltd., Venaka TReLeaf and Hellenic Rescue Team for the preparation and verification of the poster.

SILVANUS – Modern and Innovative Protector against Extreme Wildfire,
For the Benefit of Forests and Humankind

Report from the SILVANUS Interim GA Meeting

SILVANUS project is coming close to its important milestone, as the team is entering month 18 of the project. 💡

The consortium has convened at an online Interim General Assembly meeting as a preparation for the beginning of the trial period involving the implementation of the diverse pilots in eleven countries (more on this to come!), and on the current status of user products, the components of the SILVANUS platform, from the biodiversity and citizen engagement mobile application, the fire danger risk assessment and fire spread forecast tool, the augmented and virtual training toolkit for firefighters, the fire detection systems based on social sensing and IoT devices, fire inspection and detection systems using drones and robots, and the user interface.

The SILVANUS team is preparing for an important milestone in the project with the start of the trial period – the implementation of 12 pilots, and the launch of the educational campaign on the dangers of extreme wildfire and the promotion of SILVANUS outputs.

SILVANUS Video – A Holistic Digital Solution to Wildfire Management

The European Broadband Competence Offices (BCOs) Network, a European Commission initiative, has produced a video about the SILVANUS Project – A Holistic Digital Solution to Wildfire Management.

The 3-minute video features interviews with the SILVANUS technical manager Krishna Chandramouli from Venaka Treleaf and project partner Despina Anastasopoulos from Netcompany-Intrasoft and includes (among other material) footage from SILVANUS pilot sites in Portugal, Australia and Croatia by SILVANUS partners Terraprima, CSIRO and Croatian Firefighting Association, along with a visual presentation of an IoT device for detecting fire, one of the components of the SILVANUS platform, by project partner Konstantinos Avgerinakis from Catalink Ltd.

The emphasis of the video is on how technology can prove to be a valuable asset to fight and prevent extreme wildfire, and how connectivity in rural and forest areas of Europe is a prerequisite for this digital solution.

This video is part of the European Broadband Competence Offices Network’s programme promoting awareness of good practices in broadband projects as well as EU broadband funding and policy.

EUFireProjectsUnited Video from Coimbra, Portugal

The EUFireProjectsUnited video, filmed by the Coordination and Support Action H2020 project Firelogue at the International Conference for Forest Fire Research in Coimbra, Portugal, focuses on the short presentations of the H2020 wildfire management projects. SILVANUS is presented by the project coordinator Michele Corleto, the technical manager Krishna Chandramouli, and the dissemination manager Lovorko Marić.

The conference was an excellent experience for networking and establishment of common wildfire management goals among EUFireProjectsUnited.

Thank you to Firelogue for the production of the video.

EUFireProjectsUnited Joint Dissemination Workshop

The EUFireProjectsUnited Joint Dissemination Workshop, organised by Firelogue, has had a wide range of wildfire-related projects presented (Firelogue, TREEADS, FIRE-RES, SAFERS, FirEURisk, FIRE-IN, Pyrolife, FIREADAPT), with a focus on the results and challenges so far for the projects that have entered their second year, along with the introduction of new projects. The workshop was attended by a high number of interested parties in the field of wildfire prevention.

The SILVANUS presentation focused on a short summary of the main results for the first year of the project, focusing primarily on presenting the user products (AR/VR training toolkit, citizen engagement mobile application, fire danger risk assessment using earth observation data sources, fire prevention and awareness support mobile application, fire detection system based on social sensing, fire detection using IoT and on-site devices, fire spread forecast models, fire detection and inspection using drones and ground robots) and announcing the pilot implementation trial period, which will take place between April and September 2023 (roughly between month 18 and month 24 of the project). Discussion points focused on synergies and overlaps with other wildfire prevention projects, on the potential common use of reliable datasets related to fire ignition and spread, on future collaboration efforts.

This workshop therefore presented a productive and fruitful collaboration initiative for the wildfire management projects, which will continue in this year and in the following years to come.

EUFireProjectsUnited Newsletter

The EUFireProjectsUnited newsletter focuses on introducing and depicting the project results of H2020 Green Deal projects related to wildfire management and extreme wildfire prevention, which includes SILVANUS.

Coordinated by the Coordination and Support Action project Firelogue, the main goal of the EuFireProjectsUnited initiative is to identify synergies and overlaps between the various wildfire management projects, to encourage collaboration and to create and improve joint dissemination actions with the Innovation Action and other wildfire-related projects.

Along with Firelogue and SILVANUS, the EUFireProjectsUnited initiative includes TREEADS, FIRE-RES, FirEURisk, SAFERS, FIRElinks and FIRE-IN.

The 3rd SILVANUS Newsletter – Holiday Edition

The 3rd SILVANUS newsletter, with best wishes for the upcoming holidays to all of our readers and stakeholders, covers the period from November to December 2022.

Topics of the newsletter include the SILVANUS General Assembly meeting in Athens in December, an overview of international dissemination events, including the presentation of the project and its technical framework at the International Conference for Forest Fire Research in Coimbra, and key messages to three stakeholder target groups (local residents and communities affected by wildfire, civil society organisations, policy makers).

All the best for the holidays! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the SILVANUS team!

Modern and Innovative Protector Against Extreme Wildfire, For the Benefit of Forests and Humankind!

Report from the SILVANUS General Assembly Meeting in Athens, Greece

The SILVANUS Consortium gathered at the 3rd General Assembly meeting in Athens, Greece, between November 29th and December 1st 2022. The meeting was hosted by the SILVANUS partner Centre for Security Studies (KEMEA), under the Greek Ministry of Citizen Protection.

The sessions were focused on user product demonstrations of the SILVANUS platform, from the biodiversity profile and citizen engagement mobile applications, the augmented reality and virtual reality training toolkit for firefighters, the fire detection systems based on social sensing and IoT devices, drone inspection navigation pathways, the fire spread forecast, the user interface, the system integration of all platform components into a sensible infrastructure, and a comprehensive overview of SILVANUS pilots (12 pilots in 11 countries – Italy, Portugal, France, Greece, Croatia, Romania, Czechia, Slovakia, Brazil, Indonesia, Australia).

The final day of the GA presented the user product demonstrations to the External Advisory Board. The main goal of the EAB session was to show the EAB members the current progress of the platform, and to acquire important feedback from their respective areas of expertise, which feature the frontline fire rescue activities, the remote sensing and spatial data analysis, along with experiences from forestry and energy sector.

The SILVANUS team is delighted to report that the insights and constructive comments received by the EAB will have a positive impact on the development of the platform. SILVANUS is looking forward to advance fruitful communication with the EAB experts in order to achieve an important tool for wildfire prevention in the era of climate change.

SILVANUS – Modern and Innovative Protector against Wildfire

For the benefit of forests and humankind!

SILVANUS at the IX International Conference on Forest Fire Research in Coimbra, Portugal

The SILVANUS team, led by the project coordinator Michele Corleto and the technical manager Krishna Chandramouli, attended the long awaited IX International Conference for Forest Fire Research in Coimbra, Portugal.

The presentation of SILVANUS was held at the European Research and Innovation Plenary Session on the 2nd day of the Conference in front of a wide audience of wildfire management stakeholders and experts. The session was hosted by Nicolas Faivre from the European Commission.

Michele Corleto introduced the objectives and results of the project, while Krishna Chandramouli continued with a comprehensive outline of the technical framework of the project, describing the four lines of defence against extreme wildfire within the SILVANUS platform through the use of sensors, drones, robots and water cannons. This was followed by the description of methodology and the timeframe of trial periods, along with an overview of SILVANUS pilots in eleven countries on four continents. Stakeholders were invited to closely follow the project and to participate at pilot demonstrations.

The networking at the conference made it possible for SILVANUS to expand its increasing stakeholder pool and to acquire important feedback from fire experts to further advance the SILVANUS platform as the project slowly approaches the stage of pilot implementations.

The presentation was followed by a panel session with the Wildfire Risk Management Projects – FIRE-RES, TREEADS, FirEURisk, FIRE-IN and Firelogue, where ideas about further cooperation between the projects were exchanged on how to maximise the complementary results in wildfire management between all projects. SILVANUS would like to thank Firelogue and FirEURisk for their invitation to the conference, and the organisation of these sessions.

SILVANUS – Modern and Innovative Protector against Wildfire

For the benefit of forests and humankind!

SILVANUS presented at PIConf 2022, 21–22 October 2022

On October 21 and 22, 2022, SILVANUS project was presented during the annual online PIConf Conference. This year the PIConf focused on “Inclusive sustainability in Africa-Europe through dialogue and technology”.

The 2022 PIC International Online Conference is an annual event that aims to encourage discussion about topics related to Inclusive Society, Sustainable Development, Intercultural Dialogue, Higher Education, and Digitalisation. It challenges the topics of multicultural societies also from the aspects of economy and coexistence, especially in the EuroMed region. The rationale for the conference is based on the assumption that information technology, intercultural dialogue, and sustainable development are important factors of higher education, as well as economic prosperity.

During the second day of the conference (22 October 2022) in the course of the sessions on international project Dissemination and Networking Opportunities, Prof. Michele Corleto, SILVANUS coordinator from Pegaso Online University, presented SILVANUS at the “Panel Discussion: Education – Bringing Together People also through Virtual Collaborative Learning”. Prof. Corleto gave out an overview of the lifetime of the project, with a detailed presentation which underliend the main objective to create a climate resilient forest management platform to prevent and combat forest fire.

The 2nd SILVANUS Newsletter

The 2nd SILVANUS newsletter, covering the period from July to October 2022, is available here.

Topics of the newsletter include the SILVANUS General Assembly meeting in Bari and the visit to the pilot site in Gargano National Park in Italy, an overview of international dissemination events, including television coverage, key messages to three stakeholder target groups (energy and water infrastructure, timber industry, infrastructure and road network), a report on submitted Deliverables, and a link to the new SILVANUS promotional video.

SILVANUS Video – Modern and Innovative Protector Against Wildfire

Take a look at the SILVANUS promotional video, assembling footage shot on location in Portugal, Italy, Croatia, Indonesia and Australia, shot by SILVANUS partners Terraprima, Venaka TReLeaf, Micro Digital, Croatian Firefighting Association, AMIKOM Yogyakarta University, and CSIRO!

Footage locations include the pilot sites of Gargano National Park in Italy, Sebangau National Park in Indonesia, Cova da Beira in Portugal, along with footage from Natural Park Telašćica and the Kvarner Gulf in Croatia.

The video is telling a visual story on the SILVANUS platform will help in achieving a quicker and more effective response to extreme wildfire, emphasising a holistic approach, taking into account safety of households, communities, and property, durability of infrastructure, quick response of firefighters, and biodiversity restoration.

Immerse yourself in the world of SILVANUS! For the benefit of forests and humankind.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more.

SILVANUS at the Fire Ecology Across Boundaries Conference in Florence, Italy

SILVANUS had the honour of attending and participating at the Fire Ecology Across Boundaries Conference in Florence, Italy from 4th to 6th of October. The project was presented by the coordinator Michele Corleto from Universita Telematica Pegaso and Alexandre Lazarou from Zanasi & Partners, at the panel session and roundtable on wildfire risk scenarios addressing the expected Green Deal impacts related to building resilience into European landscapes, organised by Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia. A wonderful opportunity for EU Fire Projects United to reunite, coordinated by the CSA project Firelogue!

SILVANUS Special Session (Multimodal Signal Processing Technologies for Protecting People and Environment against Natural Disasters – MSPND) at the 19th International Conference on Content-based Multimedia Indexing in Graz, Austria

SILVANUS held a special session at the 19th International Conference on Content-based Multimedia Indexing in Graz, Austria, titled MSPND – Multimodal Signal Processing Technologies for Protecting People and Environment against Natural Disasters. Krishna Chandramouli from Venaka TreLeaf, the technical coordinator for SILVANUS, was presenting a paper on Ecological Impact Assessment Framework for Areas Affected by Natural Disasters, whose lead author is Kusrini Kusrini from Universitas AMIKOM Yogyakarta. The presentation of the paper was focused on depicting a forest biodiversity model as a means to quantify biodiversity, with an analysis of ecological resilience to a wildfire event. The session was followed by a presentation of SILVANUS by Maria-Eirini Pegia from Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) with the paper on BiasUNet: Learning Change Detection over Sentinel-2 Image Pairs. The third presentation was by Rafik Ghali from on Wildfire Segmentation using Deep-RegSeg Semantic Segmentation Architecture.

This was a long-awaited event for the SILVANUS team, and it resulted in a successful SILVANUS session where the stakeholder network was expanded and the first-year project results were presented!

France 3 Television Report on the SILVANUS Pilot Site Visit to Haute-Vienne Department, Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region

The France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitaine television report on the SILVANUS pilot site in Haute-Vienne department in France, which features SILVANUS partners International Emergency Firefighters (PUI), led by Iliana Korma and Philippe Besson, and the SILVANUS Scientific Coordinator Venaka TReLeaf, represented by Krishna Chandramoiuli, is available here.

A first look at testing, analysing, and deploying drone technology at the pilot site where the SILVANUS platform will be implemented into practice!

SILVANUS Site Visit to the Gargano National Park in Apulia Region, southern Italy

SILVANUS team has visited the pilot sites of the Gargano National Park in the scenic region of Apulia in Italy on the 7th and 8th of July. This is one of the pilot sites where the ambitious ideas and concepts of the SILVANUS project will come to fruition in practice, producing a substantial, user-friendly, and comprehensive technological platform for fire fighters, first responders, population affected by wildfire, and many other diverse stakeholder target groups such as the timber industry, or the financial, health, and energy sectors.

A drone was deployed for a detailed visual analysis of the previously fire-damaged area in the vicinity of Vico del Gargano, discussions were led that brought practical real-time solutions into the forefront, interviews were conducted with representatives of ARIF Regione Puglia, the Apulian Regional Agency for Irrigation and Forestry Activities, that provided essential information from the frontlines for the further advancement of SILVANUS platform. Logistics were discussed in detail on setting up the forward command centre, the fire sensors, and the deployment of technical equipment for quick and efficient wildfire prevention, detection, and response.

Thank you again to ASSET – Regional Strategic Agency for Sustainable Development in Apulia Region and ARIF Regione Puglia for organising this crucial meeting and site visit in the advancement of the SILVANUS platform!

Report from the SILVANUS General Assembly Meeting in Bari

The SILVANUS project consortium has convened on the 5th and 6th of July in Bari, Italy, the capital city of the Apulia region, for a General Assembly Meeting where the development of the project was further discussed and consolidated. The meeting was organised and hosted by the project partner ASSET – the Regional Strategic Agency for Sustainable Development in Apulia Region.

The high season for extreme wildfire events has commenced, and the southern Italian region of Apulia has been deeply significantly affected. This includes the scenic landscapes of the Gargano National Park, which is one of the eleven SILVANUS pilot sites where project outputs will be demonstrated. A site visit to Gargano by the SILVANUS team was conducted on the 7th and the 8th of July.

The opening discussion of the GA meeting was focused on the contributions of SILVANUS to future mitigation and decrease of extreme wildfire events in the region of Apulia and beyond. Furthermore, technical specifications of SILVANUS platform were thoroughly discussed among partners, dissemination activities were presented, and open-ended questions were efficiently resolved.

On the 2nd day, the development of diverse pilots was presented, from such varied locations such as the Podpolanie region in Slovakia to the biodiversity of Sebangau National Park in Indonesia, from Queensland in Australia with the presentation of the fire-detecting unmanned ground vehicles, to the Gargano National Park in the hosting Italian region of Apulia.

Developments and productive discussions of both technical and project management aspects were in the forefront, such as the development of the biodiversity profile and citizen engagement programme applications, fire danger assessments and fire detection systems, ecological resilience programmes, big-data framework and platform architecture, and many more crucial building components that will craft the vastly ambitious SILVANUS platform.

SILVANUS Newsletter

The SILVANUS newsletter is available here.

The first half of the newsletter focuses on the introduction of the project with the definition of its objectives and a short visual demonstration of pilot locations, while the second half summarizes the chief messages to three stakeholder target groups (first responders, firefighters, forest and land owners), along with reports from most important dissemination events (with a special emphasis on the EU Green Week webinar).

The newsletter finishes with an overview of the released and submitted Deliverable focusing on existing forest management services and formalization of functional requirements.

EU Green Week Webinar and the opening of YouTube channel

SILVANUS project opened its YouTube channel with the recording of the 2-hour webinar, which took place on June 3, 2022 and organised within the EU Green Week.

The webinar focused on introducing the SILVANUS project with a clear determination of the project objectives, followed by three demonstrations of versatile pilots in Italy, Portugal, and Indonesia. The pilots in diverse geographical regions are focused on various distinct phases of protection against wildfire (prevention and preparedness, detection and response, restoration and adaptation), and manifold infrastructural challenges, such as the impact of extreme wildfire on electricity and water supply.

Thank you to EU Green Week for giving SILVANUS the opportunity to present the project, and to all the participants for attending the session.

Watch the webinar and subscribe to the SILVANUS YouTube channel here:

Overview of SILVANUS dissemination events in May

SILVANUS had the honour of participating at the first day of the Aerial Firefighting Conference in Nîmes, France on May 18, 2022, which focused on the science and innovation on forest fire and aerial firefighting. The SILVANUS presentation was held by Iliana Korma, the business development director for International Emergency Firefighters (PUI), at a special session dedicated to EU projects. The presentation focused on the SILVANUS mission and the methodology of developing the platform, featuring a short overview of the SILVANUS pilots across 11 countries, and a detailed overview of the French pilot.

The presentation introduced SILVANUS and its outputs in the fight against wildfire and climate change to an important pool of stakeholders.

SILVANUS project was presented at the 19th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management conference (ISCRAM) in Tarbes, France, on May 22nd, 2022. Scientific coordinator Krishna Chandramouli has made a short summary of the SILVANUS mission and objectives, followed by a technical demonstration of early-stage results in all three phases (prevention and preparedness, detection and response, restoration and adaptation). The presentation concluded with a brief overview of the eleven pilots and the methodology of SILVANUS platform development.

SILVANUS had the privilege of having a poster presentation at the IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organizations) risk analysis conference, which took place between May 31st and June 2nd, 2022 in Nancy, France. The project was presented by Yvonne Brodrechtova from the Technical University of Zvolen, focusing on stakeholder participation in lowering risk associated with wildfire forest management – Slovakia, Podpolanie region. Within her poster presentation, she briefly presented SILVANUS and its goals, followed by example of Slovakian pilot focusing mainly on stakeholder participation and management in three technical blocs with the aim of lowering forest fire risk.

Report from the FIRElinks Event in Arnhem, Netherlands

The FIRElinks event on the 11th and 12th of May 2022 in Arnhem, Netherlands was participated by leading experts representing the fire fighters, academics, researchers, and industrial members. The event included a keynote speech on ‘Wildfires in the Netherlands’ by Jelmer Dam, which outlined the challenges of wildfires encountered by the national response team.

Krishna Chandramouli from Venaka TReLeaf GbR presented the objectives and scope of SILVANUS to the participants and furthermore took part in a panel session to discuss the challenges and solutions that are to be developed within the project duration. On day 2, a field visit was organised, which was preceded by a keynote description of a personal experience in tackling wildfire at Wateren (Drenthe) on 7^th August 2018. Several comparisons and contracts were extracted between the experience of urban fires and wildfires. The need for weather and climate data services were furthermore emphasised which could have offered timely knowledge for mitigating the wide spread of fire.

Many thanks to FIRElinks (firelinks.eu) for organising the event and inviting SILVANUS to participate!

Report from the SILVANUS Plenary Meeting in Zvolen, Slovakia

The SILVANUS project held its second plenary meeting in Zvolen, Slovakia, organised by the Technical University of Zvolen, between the 28th and 31st of March 2021.

Exchanging ideas, outlining the following steps, determining and finetuning the strategy and the methodologies – it was an important week for the project, and SILVANUS will soon share its first outputs with its stakeholders!

The road to innovation is moving ahead – SILVANUS platform will be a huge part in the fight against wildfire and climate change.

Report from the SILVANUS Kick-off Meeting in Naples, Italy

The SILVANUS project held its kick-off meeting on December 13th and 14th 2021 in Naples, Italy. The interdisciplinary team of experts from environmental, technical, and social sciences have convened and launched the main activities of this ambitious project focusing on wildfire prevention.

Named after a Roman god who was known as the protector of the woods, the main objective of the SILVANUS project is to offer a new technological solution to improve the preparedness and prevention of wildfire ignition. The key output is the development of a climate resilient forest management platform to prevent and suppress forest fire.

The kick-off meeting introduced and ignited the productive discussions between experts from various fields, from firefighter associations to universities and think-tanks, from major technology developers to security experts. An exciting time is ahead of the SILVANUS team, and first steps in the implementation of project goals have officially commenced!