DEVELOPMENT

On May 20th, the field trials coordinated by the Forest Fire Studies Centre of ADAI took place in Windfarm of Vila Nova, in the Municipality of Miranda do Corvo and District of Coimbra (Portugal). These tests were attended by about 80 researchers from several research institutions, three firefighter crews and three sapper crews. The fire experiments were carried out on 10 plots in the Lousã Mountain, within the scope of several national and international projects related with wildfires in topics like the use of unmanned aerial means for fire characterisation, automatic suppression means on the ground and in the air, house protection systems, analysis of fire interference in the communication network, smoke emission and dispersion analysis, fire georeferencing systems using mobile phones, analysis of the extreme fire behaviour and impact of fire on gas containers, among other topics.
 
One of the tests consisted of demonstrating the drone developed within the scope of the SAP project, for the suppression of a fire front. This demonstration was carried out with the support of a forest fire fighting vehicle from the Serpins Voluntary Firefighters and counted on the active participation of all project partners. The drone proved to be effective in fighting fire, in the extremely adverse conditions that were felt, highlighting the high slope, wind intensity, flame height and intensity of the fire front.