Specialists from Portugal, Spain, and France have developed a computer application that will allow for real-time monitoring of wildfires and fuel load on land this summer.
Speaking to Lusa, the Commander of the Terras de Trás-os-Montes sub-region, representing the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority (ANEPC), one of the Portuguese partners in the European USE4FOREST project, explained that the new app will come into operation during the critical fire period – from July to September -, “to understand its potential in organising how we combat fires and deploy resources to the most critical areas.”
According to João Noel Afonso, who was speaking at the end of a two-day meeting of partners in Miranda do Douro, Bragança district, the app also analyses locations with the highest fuel load in depopulated border regions to ensure better coordination between the organisations involved, whether in firefighting or land-use planning.
He said that the project was viewed with great optimism, given its potential and the desire that, upon its completion, corrective measures be put in place to prevent fires in general.
Financed with €2.2 million in European funds and totalling nearly €3 million, the USE4FOREST project involves 14 entities from three countries (Portugal, Spain and France) in Southwest Europe.
“The type of fires has been changing in recent years as a result of climate change, becoming increasingly violent and catastrophic, and we intend to innovate in forest management to avoid greater disasters,” said Noel Afonso.
Ina Bárrio Blanco, representing the project’s lead entity, the Xunta de Galicia, noted that another immediate goal is to articulate faster action to extinguish forest fires and to work together on fire prevention using a new strategy based on land clearing and monitoring.
“The fires in Spain, France, and Portugal in 2025 were faster and more explosive, as if there were no borders. Portuguese fires cross into Galicia and Castile and León, and those from Castile and León spread into Portugal. This way, the different entities of each country can try to cooperate,” she said.
According to the Executive Secretary of the Intermunicipal Community (CIM) of Terras de Trás-os-Montes, this project includes a series of “pilot projects” to be undertaken by Portugal, Spain, and France, to make forests more resilient to fire.
Aiming to develop innovative strategies to prevent forest fires and enhance forest areas in the region, the project began on January 1, 2024, and is scheduled for completion on December 31 this year, with conclusions to be presented in the first quarter of 2027.
The cross-border cooperation programme’s page dedicated to this project, states that in the last decade (2012–2022), Southwest European countries suffered a high number of fires, with an annual average of 222 in Spain, 213 in Portugal, and 105 in France, placing them among the five countries with the highest number of fires in the EU (European Union).
“The fact that three of the worst fire seasons in the EU have occurred in the last six years demonstrates the upward trend, due in part to the effects of climate change, a situation aggravated in Southwest Europe by the progressive abandonment of rural areas and the subsequent extinction of productive activities traditionally linked to forestry,” it added. Lusa
