Forest fires do not stop. According to data from Conaf, in the 2022-2023 season, more than 3,400 of these events have already been registered. and the affected area exceeds 53 thousand hectares, a figure that represents 30% more compared to the same period last year.
Thus, every year, various institutions work to improve protocols, train personnel and acquire equipment. ad hoc to fight forest fires.
It is in this context that the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Concepción together with its Data Science Unit (UDS) created Gesfirea socio-technical management model for rural fire management that is currently used at the CMPC Fire Center.
The aim of this tool is to improve combat management and support decision-making. This is how, with this new platform, operators have online —and on a single screen— information on everything related to rural fires, such as the weather, cartography, combat resources, detection of new sources of fire and their progress, in addition to a projection of these.
The new program allows an ordering of background information, such as the type of plantations present in the properties, management and tasks of the forests, in addition to adding the meteorological information. Data that allows the radio operators of the fire station to manage and make strategic decisions, such as the allocation of combat resources.
Technology at the service of fighting forest fires / Credit: UdeC Data Science Unit
“This is a software which allows dispatchers to make decisions with less cognitive load, which allows them to visualize the information in a dual, graphical and form format. It adapts strongly to their task, which reduces their stress, and also allows them to support each other more easily,” he said. Marcela VarasHead of IIT-UdeC Project.
Optimizing the combat strategy
The executing team of the project, made up of professionals from the UDS of the UdeC and CMPC, initially studied the processes associated with firefighting that were then used, to later model the problem and devise a solution..
This was addressed by an interdisciplinary team that included ergonomics specialists from the UdeC, who analyzed in detail the fire management needs from the communications center, which is the nerve center where these events are handled.
With these analyses, a software was conceived where three main aspects stand out: the management of data (spatial and non-spatial), the optimization of the use of resources and the development of the system that organizes all the processes involved, giving life to what CMPC baptized as Gesfire.
The CMPC Forest Corporate Affairs Manager, Ignacio Lira, explained the purpose of the tool created in conjunction with the University. “With this new software, programs were replaced in order to optimize decision-making at the company’s Fire Center. The station’s radio operators, who play a crucial role in the combat strategy, thanks to the Gesfire platform can view —on a monitor— a series of data, with which they can determine and dispatch the number of brigades and land resources and aircraft that will participate in a combat making the management more efficient”.
While, Pedro Gallardo, a senior developer at UDS, commented that by working hand in hand with plant operators and CMPC executives, they were able to understand the importance of fire management for the company. “We realized that the fire process is the most valuable thing they had and, at the same time, what afflicted them the most. This, because the old fire system did not effectively comply with what the company required: great agility and quick responses”, he concluded.
