What we achieve

Climate change will have the highest environmental impact in the north and south of Europe as identified in the Interreg Euro-MED programme. This area is in deep need of transnational harmonisation of tools and practices designed to monitor and manage natural disasters and risks induced by human activities, all with the single goal: creating a common approach to the prevention of climate change effects.

The new solution implemented in the FRED project has the ambition to go hand in hand with technical advancement of UAVs in actual field operations.

The project will build upon the knowledge produced from previous projects which have employed fast fire detection techniques using UAVs and an integrated alarming and fire fighting forces mobilisation platform.

FRED will go beyond that knowledge by employing state of the art techniques for fuel mapping and description. Fuel mapping is essential for the estimation of potential fire risk before the commencement of the fire season, in the attempt to effectively prevent forest fires and mega-fires in particular.

Fire danger index will be tested in this project, which is based on the potential fire behaviour and will integrate anthropogenic activity, local knowledge and past experience. The project will provide an applied and holistic approach for the development of a forest fire prevention and mitigation strategy applicable to the entire Euro-Mediterranean region.

An added value of the project is that the developed approach will be tested in several areas across the Mediterranean covering a wide range of vegetation formations and different “firescapes”, which ensures its transferability to all fire prone environments.