Starting in 1997 and based on space technology know-how, our department has led the development and patenting of the FireWatch system for automated early detection of forest fires. This project was supported by the DLR Technology and Marketing Division. The system was introduced to the market and further developed by our industrial partner IQ wireless GmbH (Berlin) in 2001. Meanwhile FireWatch is one of the most successful technology transfer projects of DLR. The new technology has been awarded the German-Polish Innovation Prize and the DLR Technology Prize.
Up to 10000 km2 of forests are destroyed by fire in Europe every year. Early warning and fast extinction of forest fires are the only way to avoid major casualties and damage to nature. It has been normal practice for trained staff to observe endangered areas. In Germany, several hundred forest observation towers have been erected. The staff worked up to 12 hours per day, usually under difficult circumstances. Different attempts to develop a technical system for this task have failed in the testing phase. FireWatch is based on new concepts of both hard- and software. It is adapted to the specific conditions of densely wooded regions and detects fire via the trail of smoke within less than 10 minutes of it becoming visible.
One system controls an area of about 300 square kilometers. It consists of a rotating high resolution digital camera with innovative electronics. Digital images are transmitted to the computer and analyzed. The software recognizes smoke almost in real time by analyzing its typical dynamic and stochastic features. Warnings are automatically passed on to a central monitoring unit, where an operator evaluates them. For this purpose user-optimized software was developed.
Today nearly 100% of endangered German forests are monitored by FireWatch. About 180 systems are operational in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt and Niedersachsen. FireWatch has improved the working conditions of the staff and increased the reliability of fire detection. The false alarm rate due to weather and harvest activities remains below 1%. The forest authority that tested the system has confirmed that the system is mature for service and easy to use. It could also be shown that it saves costs.
Due to the success in Germany foreign forest services have become interested in FireWatch. Test installations have been made in Estonia, Greece, Czech Republic, Portugal, Mexico and the United States. FireWatch was presented at several exhibitions, including CeBIT 2009 (photo).