Startup Dryad Networks announced a pilot program for its ultra-early wildfire detection IoT (Internet of Things) solution. The firm is looking to partner with up to ten forest owners to validate its solution at scale in areas of the world plagued by wildfires including the Americas, Europe, Indonesia and Australia.
Forestry businesses interested in applying for the pilot program need to complete a short application form by 30 September. Selection criteria includes: a minimum potential deployment size of at least ten thousand hectares; a focus on sustainable forestry management practices; and a team willing to help deploy the sensors in forests, guided by Dryad’s experts.
Forest managers involved in the six-month pilot program will gain early access to this award-winning technology at a significant discount and in return will collaborate with the Dryad team to ensure that the solution provides the data they require to manage their estates and reliably detect fires.
Dryad’s Silvanet solution provides public and private forest owners with an affordable and easy-to-deploy solution for tackling wildfires in under 60 minutes at the initial smoldering stage. The first of several pilots kicked off in Germany in August 2021 following the first live demonstration of the technology in action.
Dryad has also established a channel program and is recruiting forestry industry resellers worldwide that have the required technical knowledge and a shared desire to help combat climate change by reducing the volume of wildfires.
An impact tech startup, Dryad’s goal is to digitize the forest and help protect and regrow the world’s largest carbon sink. The firm aims to save one million hectares of forest from burning by 2030, avoiding 400m tonnes of CO2 emissions, and preventing substantial economic losses. Dryad is already making waves, having won the Energy & Environment Award in the 2021 Top Tier Impact (TTI) Global Impact Awards in August 2021, and being named as a finalist in Greenbackers’ 26 for COP 26 program, which connects startups with climate-focused investors.
Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO and Co-Founder of Dryad Networks, said: “The devastating impact on the climate and on forest owners’ bottom lines of the wildfires burning across the world from Canada and California to Turkey and Greece underlines the requirement for a new approach that detects wildfires at the smoldering stage before they wreak havoc. With the first pilot deployments of our Silvanet solution already underway, we are now scanning the globe for like-minded forestry estates to partner with us on a game-changing pilot program to digitize forests, help combat wildfires, and protect the natural world and forest owners’ revenues.”
Wildfires are responsible for around 20% of annual global CO2 emissions. In California in 2018, wildfires caused $150 billion in economic damage, equivalent to 0.7 percent of the GDP of the USA.
Dryad’s future plans include helping forest managers to optimize the health and growth of the forest, and improve productivity and profits using data-driven decision tools. This will entail adding third-party LoRaWAN-compatible sensors to Silvanet, enabling the system to collect and analyze data on soil moisture, tree growth and the surrounding microclimate.
Dryad will be exhibiting at the Impact Festival in Frankfurt, Germany, which takes place 16-17 September.
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Media contact
Rebecca Morpeth Spayne,
Editor, International Fire Buyer
Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922
Email: editor@firebuyer.com
