In Germany, forests are being equipped with sensors to detect fires

With a third of the Brandenburg region covered in forest, a company has developed technology to detect the start of fires.

How to fight fires more effectively? While summer often rhymes with forest fires, in Germany a company has had the idea of ​​developing gas sensors to detect the start of fires more quickly than conventional monitoring systems. These sensors, which operate on solar energy, are the idea of ​​a company based near Berlin, in the Brandenburg region of Germany, which is the most affected by forest fires each year.

In the Eberswalde forest, the presence of the sensors, which are as big as the palm of your hand, is rather discreet. The 392 devices were attached to trees, three meters above the ground, explains Marco Bönig, head of development. “When a forest fire is smoldering, the composition of the air changes. A sensor can detect a fire within a minute, it’s like an electronic nose. There’s a sensor every 100 meters.”

In his lab, Jürgen Müller prepares the sensors before installing them. The engineer teaches them to memorize odors using artificial intelligence and samples he has taken in the forest. “We use bark, plant remains, needles or leaves that we heat to 400 degrees. It doesn’t burn, it just gives off a light smoke that we make our sensors sniff. We repeat the operation a hundred times and the next time the sensor detects this smell in the air, it will remember it.”

Dietrich Bester, owner of 20 hectares of pine forest, has installed 25 sensors on his plots.

“For me, it’s the best protection, especially for large plots with firs, pines and spruces, like here. They are very close to each other and can burn like matches.”

Dietrich Bester, owner of 20 hectares of forest

to franceinfo

In the Brandenburg region, forests cover more than a third of the territory. With 250 forest fires last year, the region is the most affected in Germany. For Raimund Engel, the head of forest protection in Brandenburg, early detection of fires is therefore essential.
“We have little rainfall. We have periods with very high temperatures, 35/36 degrees and sometimes more. So, detect, verify, alert: this phase must be as short as possible.”

In addition to the olfactory sensors, 105 cameras installed in the region’s old watchtowers monitor the outbreak of fires. The detection devices have helped reduce the damage caused by fires by half.