A consortium of specialists from Portugal, Spain, and France has developed a software application that this summer will enable real-time monitoring of the evolution of wildfires and the fuel load present on the terrain, as revealed today.
In statements to Lusa, the Commander of the Sub-region of Terras de Trás-os-Montes, representative of the National Authority for Emergency and Civil Protection, one of the Portuguese partners of the European USE4FOREST project, explained that “this new application (‘app’) will enter into operation during the critical fire period that runs from July to September, to understand its potential in organizing and combating fires, as well as the deployment of firefighting resources, both human and motorized, to the most critical zones.”
According to João Noel Afonso, who spoke at the end of a two-day meeting among partners that took place in Miranda do Douro, in the Bragança district, another objective of this ‘app’ is to analyze locations with the highest fuel load in sparsely populated border regions, and thus to achieve better coordination among the agents involved in each action, whether firefighting or territorial planning.
The commander said that this project is viewed with great optimism, given its potential and the desire that by its end corrective paths be identified to prevent fires in general.
“The typology of fires has been changing in recent years, as a result of climate change, becoming increasingly violent and catastrophic, and we intend to innovate in forest management to prevent greater damage,” he stressed.
From the Galician government, the lead partner in the project, Ina Bárrio Blanco advanced that another of the immediate objectives is to coordinate a faster response to extinguishing forest fires and to work together on fire prevention, using a new strategy based on clearing and monitoring the terrain.
“The fires in Spain, France and Portugal in 2025 were faster, more explosive as if there were no border. Portuguese fires spread to Galicia and Castile and León, and those in Castile and León spread to Portugal. In this way, we seek cooperation among the different entities in each country,” the official indicated.
According to the Executive Secretary of the Intermunicipal Community (CIM) of Terras de Trás-os-Montes, the project also includes the execution of a set of “pilot projects” to be developed by Portugal, Spain, and France, with the objective of making forests more resilient to fires.
Financed with 2.2 million euros of European funds, and with a total investment of nearly three million, the USE4FOREST project involves 14 entities from three Southwest European (SUDOE) countries.
Aiming to develop innovative strategies for the prevention of forest fires and the valorization of forest spaces in the region, the project began on January 1, 2024 and is scheduled to conclude on December 31 of this year, with the conclusions to be presented in the first quarter of 2027.
On the cross-border cooperation program page dedicated to this project, one can read that in the last decade (2012-2022), the SUDOE countries suffered a high number of fires, with an annual average of 222 in Spain, 213 in Portugal and 105 in France, ranking among the five EU countries with the highest number of fires.
“The fact that in the last six years three of the worst fire seasons in the EU have occurred demonstrates the upward trend, noted by specialists and due in part to the effects of climate change, a situation aggravated in the SUDOE area by the progressive abandonment of rural areas and the consequent extinction of productive activities traditionally linked to silviculture,” he adds.
