Sustainable Managed Forests are the frontline against Climate Change. Forest fires are one of the major environmental problems worldwide, affecting developed and emerging countries. As a direct consequence of fire, each year millions of hectares of forests are burnt, causing the loss of human lives, livestock, damage to properties and environment. Economic damage derived is huge as well. Its accurate assessment is a complex process, since it is related not only to fire suppression costs, and restoration actions, but also to indirect effects on human health and food, local economies, loss of biodiversity, etc. The majority of forest fires (more than 95%) have an anthropic cause, which highlights the importance of Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) areas, roads or electric lines in fire prevention. COP21 Paris has identified forests as a key instrument in Climate Change fighting, being deforestation one of the main priorities.
In a world in which population is being concentrated in cities, the abandonment of rural areas is leading towards a poor managed landscape which results in more forest area with a high fuel load due to a weak vegetation management. This is making frequent the evolution of interacting local fires into “Mega-Fires” able to devastate large geographic areas. Additionally, Climate Change is modifying local weather conditions and raising the likeability of fires outside the typical fire seasons. WUI areas are critical in this process, since they require special attention from the emergency forces, and are a typical focus of fire ignition. WUI and Infrastructures in forests often lack of the necessary fire prevention countermeasures, due to their cost and their execution requirements in terms of land occupation, environmental impact, and vegetation removal. According to Eurostat, EU-28 Public Administrations are investing 2.235 million euros per year in Forest Fire Fighting. 75 % of this budget is allocated in direct fire extinction. However, as the conclusions obtained from the 2010 Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe stated, fire prevention measures are “not only preferable but also a cost effective way to manage forest fires when compared to fire fighting and suppression”.
Pyro Fire Extinction S.L. (PYRO) is a Spanish engineering start-up company devoted to the protection and conservation of wildland landscapes by means of providing value added solutions in the forest fire fighting domain. At PYRO, we believe to improve human coexistence with our world by using technology as a change driver. PYRO core business consists in providing directly to property holders, infrastructure managers and public administrations accessible protection tools against forest fires, affordable and environmentally sustainable based on proprietary technology. PYRO provides monitoring technology and environmental engineering tailored services as well.
PYRO SMART FIRE BARRIER (SFB) objective is to provide an innovative solution for the creation of forest fire preventive layers in WUI areas, linear and critical infrastructures, facilitating property holders to self-protect themselves and their goods, reducing human-caused fire effects over territory at an affordable cost. SFB allows creating new fire countermeasures, reinforcing existing ones, and reducing the impact of fire fighting operations. PYRO SFB offers a consistent driver to improve the efficiency of the overall fire suppression operative, allowing public investment-intensive fire fighting means to be assigned in a more efficient manner, and contributes to increase the safety level of fire fighting ground forces as well. Composed by PYRO-developed NUB-E Capsules plus B-SEED monitoring technologies, PYRO SMART FIRE BARRIER is able to protect properties against forest fires and monitor perimeters with a low investment and no vegetation removal.
Founded in 2011 by Mr. Jose Luis Liz Graña, PYRO main office is located at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) Business Acceleration Facilities, located at Campus de Vera (Valencia, Spain). Pyro has access to Forest Engineering Testing Facilities thanks to a framework agreement with UPV, and strong links to the research community. PYRO is partner of AF3 Project, a European R&D initiative addressed to introduce innovative technologies in the Fire Fighting sector, in which Public Fire Fighting bodies from Italy, Greece, Israel and Spain are represented.
