Description du projet
Sauver les forêts pour protéger les populations et la planète
Notre survie dépend de la santé de nos forêts. Celles-ci jouent un rôle de premier plan dans la lutte contre le changement climatique (en absorbant et en stockant le CO2 de l’atmosphère). La survie de nos forêts dépend toutefois de la manière dont nous réagissons aux menaces telles que les pullulations d’insectes, les feux de forêt, les chablis et les sécheresses. Et le changement climatique est à l’origine de toutes ces menaces en ce sens qu’il facilite la reproduction des insectes et produit davantage de combustible sec dont s’alimentent les feux de forêt. Dans ce contexte, le projet SWIFTT, financé par l’UE, proposera un moyen solide sur le plan scientifique et réalisable sur le plan technique de contribuer à surveiller et à gérer les risques forestiers. Il permettra aux gestionnaires de forêts de s’adapter au changement climatique en mettant à leur disposition des outils de télédétection abordables, simples et efficaces, étayés par des modèles d’apprentissage automatique. Cette solution sera testée en conditions réelles.
Objectif
Forests are essential to life on Earth. They proForests 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, windthrow and droughts. 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, which include Fürstliches Forstamt, Groupe Coopération Forestière and the Rigas Mezia. We anticipate monitoring and protecting up to 40M ha of global forests by 2030, saving foresters over €468M in monitoring costs and creating over 50 direct jobs.
Champ scientifique
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringsatellite technology
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesforestrysilviculture
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyentomology
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
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IA - Innovation actionCoordinateur
75015 Paris
France
L’entreprise s’est définie comme une PME (petite et moyenne entreprise) au moment de la signature de la convention de subvention.