Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Satellites for Wilderness Inspection and Forest Threat Tracking

Project description

Saving forests to protect people and planet

Our survival depends on the health of our forests. They play a significant role in fighting climate change (absorbing and storing CO2 from the atmosphere). However, the survival of our forests hinges on how we tackle threats like insect outbreaks, fires, windthrow and droughts. And climate change is behind it all – causing insects to breed more and providing more dry fuel for wildfires. In this context, the EU-funded SWIFTT project will provide a scientifically sound and technically feasible way to help monitor and manage forest risks. It will enable forest managers to adapt to climate change with affordable, simple and effective remote sensing tools backed up by machine learning models. This solution will be tested in real conditions.

Objective

Forests are essential to life on Earth. They provide habitats for thousands of creatures and combat climate change through carbon sequestration. However, our forests are threatened by insect outbreaks, fires, and windthrows. Notably, insect outbreaks are one of the leading causes of forest loss globally, destroying 85M ha of forest worth €15B annually. At the same time, wildfires destroy 400M ha annually on a global scale, according to the European Space Agency. The wind is also a significant forest disturbance agent in the temperate forests of France, Germany, and most of Europe.
Climate change affects forests, causing insects to breed more frequently. It also provides more dry fuel for global wildfires. The dry conditions increase the length of the fire season and the size of areas affected by the fire. In addition, both the frequency and the severity of large storms causing windthrow can be attributed to climate change. As a result, countless habitats are lost, and CO2 sequestered yearly decreases by over 4850M tons.
Our solution, SWIFTT, will provide a scientifically sound and technically feasible way to help monitor and manage forest risks: windthrow, insect outbreaks, and forest fires. SWIFTT will enable forest managers to adapt to climate change with affordable, simple and effective remote sensing tools backed up by powerful machine learning models. Our solution will offer a monthly health monitoring service using Copernicus satellite imagery to detect and map the various risks to which forests and their managers are exposed. Early threat detection aids timely intervention. SWIFTT will be tested in real conditions by several end-users from the forest industry across Europe.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation Actions

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-EUSPA-2021-SPACE

See all projects funded under this call

Coordinator

AXA CLIMATE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 496 125,00
Address
14 BOULEVARD POISSONNIERE
75009 PARIS
France

See on map

Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 708 750,00

Participants (9)

My booklet 0 0