Wildfire risk solutions for Spain

Organism: Ministry of Science and Innovation
Project identifier: CPP2021-008762
Financing entity: Ministry of Science and Innovation
Project execution dates: from 12/01/2022 to 11/30/2025

Forest fires caused nearly €54 billion in Europe between 2000 and 2017. Spain is one of the most affected countries in Europe with 219 large fires between 2011 and 2020 and damage worth €525 million. These figures will inevitably increase given the prospects for economic growth, expected population growth and the projected impact of climate change.

The SALUS project (after the Roman goddess of security and well-being) lays the foundations for an integrated ecosystem that combines innovative science-driven models and tools with risk transfer solutions capable of reducing the protection gap. To this end, SALUS brings together a consortium of four partners recognized for their experience in wildfires and their commitment to improving social resilience, risk awareness and citizen preparedness for wildfires. The expected deliverables are tailored to have an immediate impact by engaging relevant stakeholders, implementing operational pilots for one or more areas in Spain and paving the way for scale-up, which would strengthen institutional capacity and support the socio-economic and ecological transition towards more resilient communities.

In the short term, SALUS will contribute to the availability of tools to improve understanding and mapping of the evolving risks of extreme wildfire events. In the medium term, the project is based on an ambitious marketing and dissemination plan on a scale beyond Spain, in line with the EU objectives in the forest fire space within the EU 2030 climate and energy framework. As a whole, SALUS seeks a new paradigm shift not only in how we respond to wildfire-related risks, but also in how we strengthen resilience and accelerate recovery in the face of a changing climate.

The company Helipistas SL will participate in the SALUS project by providing the aerial vehicles and the necessary knowledge to manage them to determine the actual triggering of the system and obtain the fire perimeters and the current situation of the fire through direct aerial observation, with thermal cameras and flight monitoring. . Helipists could collect fuel data using the Lidar sensor on their flight to improve available maps. Likewise, it will make its more than 10 years of experience in the management, processing and transmission of the information obtained available to the project.

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