The signing took place during a seminar organized by the Joint Secretariat of the Interreg Sudoe program to guide beneficiaries in the administrative and financial management, implementation, follow-up and evaluation, and communication of projects.

Together with SenForFire, the signing ceremony was held for the rest of the 33 projects that in this first call for the programming period 2021-2027 have been selected by Interreg Sudoe and that will mobilize a total investment of 64.2 million.

In this regard, during the event, Luis Angel Agüeros reiterated the high level of the selected projects and the interest aroused by this initiative because in this first call, 144 projects were submitted, of which 69 passed to the second phase and, of these, almost half, were finally approved.

The Minister also placed special emphasis on the relevance of the seminar organized by the Joint Secretariat. As he pointed out, these meetings are a necessary tool to share the steps to be taken in the future by the different public and private beneficiary entities, to resolve doubts and to ensure the success of the selected projects.

On this occasion, the meeting also brought together the communication managers of the 34 projects, who were given training focused on defining a good strategy and creating attractive messages to transfer knowledge and involve all the groups of interest concerned.

SenForFire

The SenForFire project, which has started in January 2024 and will end in December 2026, will demonstrate the feasibility of low-cost wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for application in forest fire surveillance and early warning systems. At present, meteorological data and satellite images of the land surface (remote sensing) with low spatial and temporal resolution and unreliable (high false positive rate) are currently used in the Sudoe. In turn, the project will carry out Pilot Activities in areas of the Sudoe with different climate, orography and vegetation with prevention and/or early detection objectives. It will also develop an Action Plan for the adoption of WSNs by municipalities for meteorological and environmental monitoring purposes and an Action Plan for the training of professionals in WSNs for environmental risk management.

Consortium

The project involves R&D centers of CSIC (ITEFI, INIA-ICIFOR, IMB-CNM) and CNRS (CIRIMAT, LAAS) and universities (Extremadura, Évora, Coimbra and Toulouse), experts in the technologies that integrate WSNs; agencies knowledgeable and competent in prevention and detection of forest fires (AEMET and AR+I); companies that develop and offer products and services for environmental monitoring (Ray Ingeniería Electrónica and Arantec); national (MITECO), regional (Junta de Extremadura and Junta de Castilla y León), provincial (Diputación de Ávila) and local (Municipio do Fundão and Comunidade Intermunicipal do Alto Minho) public administrations with competences in forest policy and legislation, in its application and implementation in the Sudoe territory.

Contact

Those interested in validating prototypes or commercial products based on low-cost sensors for the prevention and/or detection of forest fires in real scenarios such as those offered by the SenForFire project can contact:

Esther Hontañón

esther.hontanon@csic.es

Institute of Physical and Information Technologies ITEFI

Spanish National Research Council CSIC

SenForFire Coordinator