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Artificial intelligence: it can save the forest

Report on the ADELIE system in the Landes region of France

Artificial intelligence: it can save the forest

This report was filmed in July 2023 in the Landes region of France. It illustrates how artificial intelligence is being used to protect Europe's largest forest from wildfire. It shows how PARATRONIC's ultra-precise ADELIE cameras prevented a forest in this département from being destroyed by fire in the summer of 2022.

Inspection of watchtower equipment

2 PARATRONIC employees came to check the operation of the 3 cameras installed on top of a watchtower.

The Natural Area Fires sales manager explains that the detection cameras operate 24 hours a day, monitoring a radius of 20 kilometers, or 1,250 km².

At a height of over 40 metres, a technician inspects the watchtower's equipment. The black camera, with its integrated windscreen wipers, is remotely controlled by a firefighter. The other 2 cameras film the forest continuously. The same applies to the 18 other watchtowers deployed in the Landes département.

These optical cameras are able to detect the start of fires using artificial intelligence. In fact, they refer to a huge database of thousands of reference photos and can thus recognize what is smoke or what is a cloud of dust.

What happens in the event of an alert?

In the Landes fire department HQ, an SDIS 40 operator is connected to the system's 57 cameras. He can be seen indicating that the camera's intelligence has just detected smoke. To clear up any doubts, he goes to look at the details of an image from another camera, displayed on a large screen. Zooming in, he identifies it as factory chimney smoke. "Normally, this chimney has an exclusion zone from the cameras' detection zone, but due to the wind, the smoke left the exclusion zone, creating a false alarm. There are dozens of false alarms a day, but there's no question of missing a fire, even if it means making a lot of mistakes.

SDIS 40 operator

Precise location

fire location by triangulation

When a fire is detected, its precise location is determined by triangulation using 2 cameras, via 2 watchtowers.

Colonel Éric DUVERGER, Director of the SDIS des Landes: "For us, it's vital to have a precise point, as it enables us to identify the quickest access to the fire before going to it.

Artificial intelligence has become an indispensable ally, especially as the number of fires increases.

Illustration city of MANO (40) summer 2022

In 2022, the south-west region of France was ablaze. Among the dozen or so fires in the space of a few days, TF1's crews were on the one that broke out in the town of Mano (40). The first image captured by the system sounded the alarm. A photo taken every 4 minutes shows how quickly the fire is spreading. By intervening from the outset, the firefighters were able to limit the damage.

Image of the fire

PARATRONIC would like to thank SDIS40 de Landes for their explanations and demonstration.

Thanks to the TF1 Group team - T. JARRION - V. ABELLANEDA - A.TRANCHANT

The ADELIE PARATRONIC system detects and locates forest fires, but is only part of the forest fire prevention and control actions carried out by the SDIS and the entities of the Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate for Civil Security and Crisis Management.

Artificial intelligence: it can save the forest. @TF1INFO