Now available in the media library: our contribution on the early detection of forest fires by author Cornelia Volk for the program Nano on 3Sat.

Who the 3Sat Nano If you missed the broadcast on January 10, 2023, you can now watch it online.

Last year, more forest area burned in Germany than has been the case for a long time. Many forest fires have also been reported internationally, in all parts of the world, due to heat, drought, monocultures, etc. Solution approaches, such as forest maintenance, forest restructuring or a support of the fire department are in progress, but cost time and money and will still not be able to completely prevent forest fires. In order to locate such fires as early as possible in the future, a start-up company from Brandenburg has developed a new technology for ultra-early detection. Special sensors, like a kind of digital nose, detect the relevant substances in the air particularly early in the forest and can thus - faster than previous warning systems - inform the emergency services about the affected fire sources. Current early detection systems rely primarily on optics, for example with power-supplied cameras on fire protection towers. In Brandenburg alone, more than a hundred such cameras scan the forests. Images arrive at headquarters in real time and are monitored and evaluated around the clock. The digital noses can do much of this without staff, and they're faster, too. What's more, the system learns not only to recognize that there's a fire, but also what exactly is burning, so it can already give emergency personnel clues about the best possible means of extinguishing it. For ten to 15 years the sensors function maintenance-free, it says on the net side of the inventors. At a cost of just under 50 euros per sensor, a forest of 100 hectares in size could be equipped and protected with this ultra-early warning system for around 6000 euros.

The rest of the program is also well worth watching, including illegal waste exports and the latest Copernicus climate data. As always, we publish further news and broadcast information via our News Section on Facebook or Instagram.