Forests cover vast areas making them difficult to monitor, and detect tree disease outbreaks. Limited capacities cause central civil protection agencies to struggle to monitor the diverse flora and fauna at high spatial and temporal frequency or to implement the timeliness and accuracy necessary for wildfire prevention and suppression. Preventing the transfer of disease(African swine fever) from feral to domestic animals is also a challenge in forest areas.
In this use case the combination of different types of UAVs and imaging cameras will be used to create optimised solutions for the specific scenarios. The satellite imaging data will be used to detect possible tree stress, meanwhile multi-rotor drones will be used for detailed (high-resolution) monitoring of specific forest areas (including tree health and fire risks), while fixed-wing drones are becoming an efficient tool in forestry research and will be used for wildlife monitoring due to their capacity to cover vast areas and provide fast monitoring data for wildlife (wild boars) monitoring.
Monitor forest tree health using drones, satellites and data science
Identify and inspect areas of potentially high fire risk and asses fire fuel types
Monitor ecosystems and assess biodiversity and wildlife (wild boars) populations thereby contributing to managing or preventing infectious diseases among feral animals.
Satellite imagery:
Promote drones as a forestry, ecosystems and biodiversity monitoring tool
Develop and operational demonstration of multipurpose UAV (fixed-wing, multi-rotor drone) utilisation in forest biodiversity (tree health, wildlife) and forestry management (wildfire risk) monitoring
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