| Acronym: foRESTER |
| Main Objective: In the last 20 years, Portugal has been severely affected by large wildfires with dramatic consequences. The last year was the worst on record, with the largest burnt area extent and the largest number of casualties. It is urgent that the scientific community provides sound and efficient tools capable of improving decision making during wildfires crisis to minimize its negative consequences. A key issue is the lack of decision support mechanisms for operational interventions [CTI17]. Due to the complexity of large wildfires, their effective suppression requires suitable and well coordinated resources, up-to-date knowledge of the landscape, and accurate prediction of fire behavior. A Decision Support System (DSS) that can integrate the panoply of required information in a simple and efficient platform is the main scientific challenge of foRESTER. The main goal is to provide fire managers with useful and sound information to improve fire suppression strategy and decisions. To accomplish this, foRESTER proposes a fast, reliable and informative DSS based on advanced computational intelligence and visualization techniques, that integrates innovative technologies from multi-sensor systems, cutting edge satellite image processing, and near real-time (NRT) fire spread predictions (FSP). Due to the inherent complexity of the system, we gathered a multidisciplinary team from different areas of expertise: 1) CTS-UNINOVA @ NOVA-FCT -hardware design, satellite image processing and multicriteria decision; 2) IT @ IST -image processing; 3) DGT - cartography and IPSen tinel platform; 4) MagIC @ NOVA-IMS - land cover land use cl assification; 5) CEF @ ISA - fire spread modelling; 6) CESAM @ UA - weather forecast. The project aims to provide a low-cost framework based on a WSN and new information system tools to produce a pilot demonstrator of the effectiveness of DSS for supporting decision-making in fire suppression context. It will be built on past experience from MacFIRE, together with new layers of information, providing a more informative DSS for the fire managers. Moreover, we will extend the pilot (institutional support letters in appendix) to the Médio-Tejo region and demonstrated it as a scalable platform for the entire national territory. |
| Reference: PCIF/SSI/0102/2017 |
| Funding: FCT |
| Start Date: 01-01-2019 |
| End Date: 31-12-2021 |
| Team: Henrique José Monteiro Oliveira, Marko Beko, Zahra Mokhtari, Rui Miguel Henriques Dias Morgado Dinis |
| Groups: Multimedia Signal Processing – Lx |
| Partners: 1) CTS-UNINOVA @ NOVA-FCT -hardware design, satellite image processing and multicriteria decision; 2) IT @ IST -image processing; 3) DGT - cartography and IPSen tinel platform; 4) MagIC @ NOVA-IMS - land cover land use cl assification; 5) CEF @ ISA - fire spread modelling; 6) CESAM @ UA - weather forecast. |
| Local Coordinator: Henrique José Monteiro Oliveira |
| Links: https://www.it.pt/Projects/Index/4642 |
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