The European SenForFire project, funded by the Interreg-Sudoe programme, held its third follow-up meeting at the University of Évora from 12 to 14 November. The meeting brought together more than thirty researchers from Spain, Portugal, France and Andorra. It also provided an opportunity to review the technical, management and communication progress of the project, as well as to plan activities in the areas of prevention, early warning and environmental monitoring during forest fires to be carried out over the next six months.
During the working sessions, key developments in new sensor prototypes, electronic modules and communication nodes were presented, as well as the preliminary results of laboratory tests and pilot-scale trials carried out last October at the ICIFOR-INIA-CSIC facilities. Noteworthy devices include advanced sensors for detecting gases such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and airborne particles, as well as wind sensors, infrared sensors, MEMS-based weather stations and probes for monitoring soil moisture. In terms of testing, early fire warning tests were described, with controlled burns in a calorimeter and wind tunnel, as well as prevention-oriented tests, such as soil moisture monitoring.
The meeting presented the wireless sensor network (RIS) that was deployed in the summer in twenty locations in Portugal (Fundão), Spain (Madrid and Cáceres) and Andorra. The network includes some 40 nodes and 70 sensors that continuously monitor soil temperature and moisture in real time, as well as atmospheric temperature and relative humidity and the concentration of VOCs in the air. In addition, ICIFOR-INIA-CSIC has trained technicians from MITECO’s Forest Fire Prevention and Analysis Team (EPAIF) and the Andorra Agency for Research and Innovation (AR+I) in the procedure to be followed for sampling and determining the moisture content of living vegetation at the various locations. The aim is to correlate the soil moisture data recorded by the sensors with the moisture values of living vegetation obtained by gravimetry.
Progress has also been made on cloud-based software for managing data acquired by the RIS for forest fire monitoring and early warning purposes. The current version of the software, developed and implemented by the University of Évora, allows users to view the location of the nodes deployed in the pilot areas, as well as the data acquired by them in real time. The software contains detailed information on the nodes and the sensors that comprise them and allows the sensor data to be downloaded in different formats for processing and analysis. The software is open to the general public and potential users must register both to add new nodes and to access data from nodes already in operation.
The University of Coimbra has demonstrated advances in the development of models for predicting fire risk at the local level (due to natural causes) using open databases at the national level (Portugal) and artificial intelligence. The aim is to predict the most likely points of ignition or fire initiation. For its part, ITEFI-CSIC has presented a strategy based on simplified models of fire propagation and smoke dispersion that allows multiple fire simulations to be run in a few minutes under different ignition and weather conditions. Based on the results of the simulations, an optimisation algorithm identifies the optimal network (number and spatial distribution of nodes) for early and reliable fire detection in the area of interest.
Work has also been done on organising the project’s first workshop, which will be held in Toulouse in May 2026 together with the fourth project follow-up meeting. Work has also been done on promoting an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s degree related to the SenForFire theme and on planning new prescribed burns in Cáceres (Santibañez el Alto) and Fundao, which will have to be carried out before the start of the high fire risk season in April 2026, and on analysing the forest fires that occurred in the pilot areas in the summer of 2025.
The meeting concluded with an analysis of this summer’s fires and a networking session dedicated to collaboration with other European projects in the field of fire risk management, such as RAT EOS PC (Interreg Poctep), EUBURN-RISK (Interreg Sudoe) and TREEADS (Horizon Europe).