Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SAFERS (Structured Approaches for Forest fire Emergencies in Resilient Societies)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2020-10-01 al 2022-03-31
Forest fires are exacerbated by extreme weather conditions, which are increasing both in frequency and in magnitude due to climate change. Globally, massive fires have swept through forests and other landscapes in an alarming rate, resulting in the loss of human lives, destruction of homes and biodiversity, and emitting millions of tons of CO2 and other pollutants in addition to various destructive impacts. Therefore, the need for effective management of forest fire emergencies has become very crucial.
To respond to this global challenge, the project SAFERS ‘Structured Approaches for Forest fire Emergencies in Resilient Societies’ is in a mission to support societies becoming more resilient across the key phases of the forests fires emergency management cycle.
SAFERS will realise a comprehensive Emergency Management System (EMS) which will act along with the key phases of the emergency management cycle: a big data information system integrating Earth Observation data and services offered by the EU Copernicus programme and GEOSS, crowdsourced data from social media and from other applications used by citizens as well as emergency staff and real-time data provided by accurate sensors to detect smoke or fires. Advanced algorithms based on Artificial Intelligence will be used to generate risk maps and early warnings in the preparedness phase, it will also be used to estimate the forest fire extension and its propagation in function of the forecasted weather and soil conditions in the response phase, compute the impacts of an extinguished fire in terms of economic losses and monitor the soil recovery in the post-event phase. The project will gather all these data and services in one open platform designed for forest fire management and demonstrated in 4 pilots in Italy, France, Spain and Greece to validate SAFERS services.
To respond to this global challenge, the project SAFERS ‘Structured Approaches for Forest fire Emergencies in Resilient Societies’ is in a mission to support societies becoming more resilient across the key phases of the forests fires emergency management cycle.
SAFERS will realise a comprehensive Emergency Management System (EMS) which will act along with the key phases of the emergency management cycle: a big data information system integrating Earth Observation data and services offered by the EU Copernicus programme and GEOSS, crowdsourced data from social media and from other applications used by citizens as well as emergency staff and real-time data provided by accurate sensors to detect smoke or fires. Advanced algorithms based on Artificial Intelligence will be used to generate risk maps and early warnings in the preparedness phase, it will also be used to estimate the forest fire extension and its propagation in function of the forecasted weather and soil conditions in the response phase, compute the impacts of an extinguished fire in terms of economic losses and monitor the soil recovery in the post-event phase. The project will gather all these data and services in one open platform designed for forest fire management and demonstrated in 4 pilots in Italy, France, Spain and Greece to validate SAFERS services.
Overall, the consortium was able to deliver all expected results in terms of deliverables and milestones.
WP1 “Management” overseed the progress of the project, performing time & risk management, and delivering all the key outputs foreseen for this reporting period, namely the quality assurance plan, the interim reports (at M6 and M12), the first report about stakeholder management, the data management plan, and the privacy, security, and ethical requirements.
The WP2 “Innovation Co-Design” has been fully executed, where a very successful International User Requirement Workshop (IURW) has been performed in a fully virtualized fashion, adopting new digital tools to carry out co-design exercises. The IURW was attended by a total of 90 people from 65 organizations in 18 different countries, including the participants and the members of the SAFERS Consortium. Despite the difficulties brought by this new digital co-design approach, which resulted in a 1-month delay, the final outcomes have been satisfactory. The findings of the SAFERS IURW are reported in D2.2 “End-user requirements”, which includes the list of all end-users requirements identified. Such a list has been used to identify a common set of technical requirements and the functional requirements of all WP3 “Intelligent services from EO and in-field data” and WP4 “Web-based platform for decision support” solutions. Moreover, a set of local workshops have been performed (one in each pilot site), generating specific requirements at the local level that will be considered for the implementation of the beta release (currently foreseen at M25)
WP3 and WP4 are ongoing and they have performed the first round of analysis and design (reported in the deliverables). The majority of tasks have also delivered an alpha release (originally due by M19). However, to cope with the delay caused by the difficulties brought by the pandemic, which directly affected SAFERS key personnel and forced a fully remote and virtualized working environment, the functionalities implemented by the SAFERS Intelligent Services (IS) and their level of integration into the SAFERS Platform foreseen for the alpha release has been reduced. The functionalities not implemented for the alpha release will be fully integrated into the beta release (M25).
WP5 “Field Validation with end-users and citizens” started with the definition of the pilot methodology, including the execution of the trainings, the in-field demo & feedback workshops.
WP6 “Impact Maximization” has been executed as planned, delivering all outputs as well as important KPIs with respect to the social media metrics.
WP1 “Management” overseed the progress of the project, performing time & risk management, and delivering all the key outputs foreseen for this reporting period, namely the quality assurance plan, the interim reports (at M6 and M12), the first report about stakeholder management, the data management plan, and the privacy, security, and ethical requirements.
The WP2 “Innovation Co-Design” has been fully executed, where a very successful International User Requirement Workshop (IURW) has been performed in a fully virtualized fashion, adopting new digital tools to carry out co-design exercises. The IURW was attended by a total of 90 people from 65 organizations in 18 different countries, including the participants and the members of the SAFERS Consortium. Despite the difficulties brought by this new digital co-design approach, which resulted in a 1-month delay, the final outcomes have been satisfactory. The findings of the SAFERS IURW are reported in D2.2 “End-user requirements”, which includes the list of all end-users requirements identified. Such a list has been used to identify a common set of technical requirements and the functional requirements of all WP3 “Intelligent services from EO and in-field data” and WP4 “Web-based platform for decision support” solutions. Moreover, a set of local workshops have been performed (one in each pilot site), generating specific requirements at the local level that will be considered for the implementation of the beta release (currently foreseen at M25)
WP3 and WP4 are ongoing and they have performed the first round of analysis and design (reported in the deliverables). The majority of tasks have also delivered an alpha release (originally due by M19). However, to cope with the delay caused by the difficulties brought by the pandemic, which directly affected SAFERS key personnel and forced a fully remote and virtualized working environment, the functionalities implemented by the SAFERS Intelligent Services (IS) and their level of integration into the SAFERS Platform foreseen for the alpha release has been reduced. The functionalities not implemented for the alpha release will be fully integrated into the beta release (M25).
WP5 “Field Validation with end-users and citizens” started with the definition of the pilot methodology, including the execution of the trainings, the in-field demo & feedback workshops.
WP6 “Impact Maximization” has been executed as planned, delivering all outputs as well as important KPIs with respect to the social media metrics.
The SAFERS project aims to define a novel set of services and to develop new commercial products. The overall SAFERS architecture is reported in Figure 1.
SAFERS is composed of two main macro-components, which contain the SAFERS Key Exploitable Results:
- SAFERS platform
- SAFERS Intelligent Services (IS)
The SAFERS platform
SAFERS is going to create an open and integrated platform featuring a forest fire Decision Support System.
The SAFERS platform will be based on three main components:
- A web-based dashboard (KER1), through which decision-makers will be able to effectively visualize all generated data and map products supplied by the SAFERS intelligent services, allowing to provide a single source for all relevant information in a timely manner, in order to adequately support the decision-making process.
- A Geodata Repository & Importer and Mapper (KER2): it will be developed to include a Big Data Repository for any kind of data (Data Lake), where INSPIRE compliant data will be stored; an importer and mapper that will enable to create map layers and deliver them through Open Geospatial Consortium standards; and Application Programming Interfaces-APIs services that will allow for data sharing and management.
- A semantic Decision Support System (KER3), that will allow decision-makers to map their operational procedures so as to trigger automated communication actions.
The platform will also release an open-source Software Development Kit - SDK and web-based APIs for both synchronous and asynchronous data exchange to allow a set of SAFERS Intelligent Services as well as third-party systems (e.g. existing solutions from project partners such as DEWETRA , I-REACT ) to deliver added-value solutions to/or retrieve data from the SAFERS platform.
This will create a service-oriented architecture and will also enable a data-driven exploitation model, where the data generated within the SAFERS ecosystem could also be exploited in other existing tools and solutions.
The SAFERS Intelligent Services
A set of modules able to run independently provide the so-called “SAFERS intelligent services”. These are the following:
- Crowdsourcing intelligence for improved EO mapping – Social media analysis (KER4)
- Chatbot for citizens and volunteers (OS) (KER5)
- Sub-seasonal weather forecast (KER6);
- Operational early-warnings (KER7);
- Smoke and fire detection systems (KER8),
- On-demand nowcast and forecast models (KER9);
- EO-based fire delineation and burned area mapping (KER10); and
- EO-based post-wildfire habitat recovery (KER11).
Thanks to the use of interoperability interfaces and standard communication protocols, the outputs of all of these intelligence services could be also integrated into other systems or into other European solutions.
The potential impacts will be assessed in the next reporting period.
SAFERS is composed of two main macro-components, which contain the SAFERS Key Exploitable Results:
- SAFERS platform
- SAFERS Intelligent Services (IS)
The SAFERS platform
SAFERS is going to create an open and integrated platform featuring a forest fire Decision Support System.
The SAFERS platform will be based on three main components:
- A web-based dashboard (KER1), through which decision-makers will be able to effectively visualize all generated data and map products supplied by the SAFERS intelligent services, allowing to provide a single source for all relevant information in a timely manner, in order to adequately support the decision-making process.
- A Geodata Repository & Importer and Mapper (KER2): it will be developed to include a Big Data Repository for any kind of data (Data Lake), where INSPIRE compliant data will be stored; an importer and mapper that will enable to create map layers and deliver them through Open Geospatial Consortium standards; and Application Programming Interfaces-APIs services that will allow for data sharing and management.
- A semantic Decision Support System (KER3), that will allow decision-makers to map their operational procedures so as to trigger automated communication actions.
The platform will also release an open-source Software Development Kit - SDK and web-based APIs for both synchronous and asynchronous data exchange to allow a set of SAFERS Intelligent Services as well as third-party systems (e.g. existing solutions from project partners such as DEWETRA , I-REACT ) to deliver added-value solutions to/or retrieve data from the SAFERS platform.
This will create a service-oriented architecture and will also enable a data-driven exploitation model, where the data generated within the SAFERS ecosystem could also be exploited in other existing tools and solutions.
The SAFERS Intelligent Services
A set of modules able to run independently provide the so-called “SAFERS intelligent services”. These are the following:
- Crowdsourcing intelligence for improved EO mapping – Social media analysis (KER4)
- Chatbot for citizens and volunteers (OS) (KER5)
- Sub-seasonal weather forecast (KER6);
- Operational early-warnings (KER7);
- Smoke and fire detection systems (KER8),
- On-demand nowcast and forecast models (KER9);
- EO-based fire delineation and burned area mapping (KER10); and
- EO-based post-wildfire habitat recovery (KER11).
Thanks to the use of interoperability interfaces and standard communication protocols, the outputs of all of these intelligence services could be also integrated into other systems or into other European solutions.
The potential impacts will be assessed in the next reporting period.