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March/April 2024 | Nontethelelo Ramantswana

Dryad brings Silvanet AI for Ultra-Early Detection of Wildfires

Fire management

Fire protection

Background
Dryad Network is a Berlin based start-up funded by the Venture Capital and the European Union. This organisation is making a globally meaningful contribution through its innovation and making an impact towards climate improvement. Dryad Network’s team is made up of environmental research scientists; fire expects and engineers developing an Ultra-Early Detection system.

What is it?
The Dryad Silvanet is an Ultra-Early Wildfires Detection system, which detects wildfires at smoldering phase before there is an open flame. This assists with accurately detecting a potential wildfire within the first 60 minutes from ignition.




How does it work?
The Dryad Silvanet uses solar-powered wildfire sensors with embedded artificial intelligence that measure various gases, temperature, humidity and air pressure. The sensors are placed directly in the forest approximately100m from each other (in high-risk areas) and at approximately 500m from each other (in low-risk areas). Sensor nodes connect to Silvanet Mesh and Border Gateways using LoRa, the open standards long range radio network for Internet of Things (IoT). The distributed network architecture enables large scale deployment of sensors in remote areas of the forest and in locations without existing network coverage. The distributed LoRaWAN gateways support a wide range of compliant sensors and enable large-scale deployment of multi-party sensor networks within forests of all types. Border Gateways enable 24/7 communications with a Cloud Platform for constant wildfire detection and forest health monitoring. The connectivity via LTE radio (4G/LTE-M with 2G/GPRS fallback) or inbuilt Ethernet provides satellite uplink via SWARM. The Cloud-based big data provides tools for analytics management, monitoring and alerting and also enables optimal deployment planning and multi-site management. Highly customizable - wildfire alerts can be provided via web application, SMS, and/or email.


Other interesting information
• Protects assets and prevents financial damages;
• Reduces insurance payment;
• Dramatically reduces costs of firefighting;
• Saves human and wildlife;
• Silvanet infrastructure is standards-based and can be used with many sensor applications from 3rd parties (based on the LoRa wireless network standard).
• Applications relevant to forest owners are soil moisture, tree growth, sap flow or weather stations;
• Silvanet is complimentary to satellites-based wildfire detection system;
• Silvanet is complimentary to Camera/CCTV -based wildfire detection system;
Ben Banerjee, Co-Founder & SVP Dryad Networks, said: “We are proud to offer our innovative technology in South Africa through our local partner, IoT360 and contribute to its mission of protecting nature, making an impact to climate change. Our sensors are like digital noses that aims to reduce the detection time of wildfires and catch them at the smoldering phase — when there is not yet an open flame —usually within the first 60 minutes.”

Specifications of Dryad’s Silvanet
Maintenance: Free (10-15 year)
Distance between Sensors (Radius):100m radius for 60 min detection of 2x2m fire
Sensor to Mesh Gateway (Ratio):100 sensors per Gateway, depending on topology
Power source: Solar-powered, battery-free
Energy storage: Supercapacitors
Installation: Mounted tree (3m height recommended)

For more information visit: dryad.net  

Contact details:
Freddie Siebert
+27 (0) 83 441 6851
IoT360
Email: freddie@Iot360.co.za

Ben Banerjee
Co-founder & SVP Worldwide Sales
Email: ben@dryad.net
+1 813 535 2162
Dryad Networks GmbH
Web: dryad.net