Fighting forest fires using electronic and communication technologies (LIFETEC)

LIFETEC aims at improving forest fire fighting using Electronic and Communications Technologies by reducing the detection time of forest fires and improving the efficiency of the fighting forces ensuring communications and geolocation. This will be achieved by:

• Ensuring communications between fighting forces

Forest fires often take place in remote areas without coverage of commercial mobile communication networks. However, reliable mobile communications are required to manage properly the different resources used for fighting the fire. They are also required for the brigades to work safe, as they move in a hazardous environment.

The candidate technology for these emergency communications is TETRA (Trans European Trunked Radio). TETRA networks are available in almost every European country and in many other countries around the world. The performance of TETRA in these emergency environments will be evaluated by conducting several pilots.

• Reducing the detection time using weather radar

Europe is already covered by weather radar networks. The reuse of these networks for fire detection will save significant costs while increasing the profitability of the current radar networks.