Fire prevention and firefighting strategy 2023-2024

• A mobile application to detect the best route inside forest properties and remote surveillance satellites with a high level of precision are some of the actions that the company has implemented to monitor and plan actions during this season (2023 – 2024).
• USD 79 million will be invested to intensify fire prevention, fuel management, and fire detection and firefighting.

A complex season, with high temperatures, possible heat waves, and extreme weather conditions, 70 – 40 -10, is what Ricardo Austin, ARAUCO’s Heritage Manager, anticipates for the coming months.

For this reason, in addition to presenting the “Comprehensive Fire Prevention and Firefighting Strategy 2023-2024” – whose main focus is to protect rural and urban areas in communities historically affected by fires – the company has taken advantage of all the benefits of artificial intelligence and digital tools to increase the efficiency in processes and obtain better results.

A clear example of this is Wood Tracking. This is an application that – using an algorithm similar to Waze – shows the interior roads of forest lands and their trafficability so that fire brigades can reach their destination by the fastest route. One of its characteristics is that it is connected to ARAUCO’s Fire Central, making it possible to monitor the state of the roads through the information that the users themselves incorporate and to guide those on the road.

FOREST 1 and FOREST 2 are part of the same thing. These two satellites from the German company OroraTech are complemented by 25 others to monitor from space, day and night, what is happening on ARAUCO’s land and in its protected areas. Thanks to a platform that detects temperature and weather conditions, the information is processed, generating alerts to verify on the ground and dispatch the necessary resources to combat a fire outbreak.

In addition to these technologies, fixed cameras and artificial intelligence-driven robots are used to help make monitoring and early detection of accidents even more effective.

Austin states that “last season left important lessons, and today we are deploying all our efforts to address firefighting in a more comprehensive manner, implementing new tools and technologies that will allow us to act more quickly and smoothly with all the actors involved in this type of situation.”