Wildfires are getting more common and causing more damage than ever, thanks largely to climate breakdown. Hot summers coupled with longer droughts create the ideal conditions for uncontrollable blazes.
Last year was Europe’s second-worst fire season: 830,000 hectares of land burned and more than €2 billion in damages were inflicted. That is just the financial cost; the immense toll on some communities and day-to-day life cannot be measured.
That is why forecasting where fires are going to strike, making sure firefighters are trained correctly and providing them with the very best equipment is oh so important in saving lives, livelihoods, biodiversity and areas of outstanding beauty.
The European Union’s Patent Office (EPO) is on the case and last week launched an initiative aimed at checking all of those boxes.
Under its new knowledge-sharing platform, patents and patent applications relating to technologies that prevent, detect and extinguish fires,...