A Systemic Framework for the adoption of Integrated Fire Management

As the world grapples with the range of environmental challenges such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and forest degradation, the contribution and consequence of extreme wildfires is placed at the heart of enhancing ecological resilience and protect the forest against the loss of biodiversity. The complexity in developing solutions in response to the challenge results from the interdependency that plays between the different factors and actors being involved in the environmental protection. As the world moves towards a unified goal of global protection of forest, it is vital to ensure research and technological innovations being developed are being presented to the relevant stakeholders that yield lasting impact resulting in the protection of forests. To this end, the goal of the paper is to present the notion of Integrated Fire Management (IFM), a systemic framework developed with technology interventions drawing up on the experiences of firefighters, civil protection authority, citizens and researchers composing of expertise in landscape management, forest and environmental protection. The origins of term IFM could be traced to refer a series of actions implemented through reduction, readiness, response and recovery planning and management of forests natural habitat[1]. While the notion of IFM has been published in the literature dating back to 2006, there has been several interpretations and adoptions of the IFM that has been experimented with since then. At the heart of the IFM strategy, is the interdependency of actions and activities that should be carried out in (i) prevention and preparedness; (ii) fire detection, suppression, and response coordination; and (iii) rehabilitation and restoration of activities. The continuous combination of these activities has been identified to lead a sustainable effort on protecting forest against fire. The use of IFM strategy as a framework has been identified to be instrumental in the planning and operational systems designed to not only reduce the impact of fires but also to optimize the benefits derived from them.

Thus, addressing the need for the adoption of IFM for the protection of forest and environment, the SILVANUS project has identified a strategy for the implementation of the IFM. The different phases of the project activities will extend from the prevention and preparedness stages to the end of restoration activities. The platform has been designed to deliver direct interaction to four (4) stakeholders namely who will actively engage in fire management and forest protection. The project innovations can be summarized as follows:

• Development of an integrated citizen engagement campaign for raising awareness on the threat and positive benefits of fire
• Advanced use of UAVs and UGVs for the collection of situational awareness from the fire fronts
• Installation of IoT and camera devices for in the forest for the early-stage detection and alerts on fire incidents
• AI algorithms for the modelling and forecast of fire spread projected from the fire incident origin
• Use of forward command centers and cloud command center for response coordination
• Use of Earth Observation (EO) datasets for the monitoring of post rehabilitation strategy of the region.