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Researchers of the UGR develop an intelligent system to help to extinguish forest fires
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06.11.2006
It is difficult to create a computer model that reproduces forest fires extinction, a complex process that depends on such a changing factor as fire. But this is what a research group of the Higher Technical School of Computer Engineering of the University of Granada (UGR), intends to achieve with the SIADEX project.

It applies Artificial Intelligence techniques, also used by the Pentagon of the USA, to the fight against fires in Andalusia. According to Luis Castillo, one of the persons in charge of the project, “we do not intend to substitute extinction experts, but to offer them a useful and simple tool to take decisions”.

SIADEX is an intelligent system capable of generating, in an autonomous way, extinction plans for forest fires on the ground from the available data (where did the fire started, environment, resources available, etc.). This system gathers a series of computer programs, among which two stand out: BACAREX, a knowledge base where the experience of the Plan INFOCA is included, and the SIADEX, a program capable of using the data of the INFOCA to establish plans for action. The extinction expert will have access to this system by means of the Internet, using a desktop computer, a portable or even a PDA (a small digital device).

SIADEX uses a technology which has also been used by the Department of Defence of the USA, but, according to Castillo, the system developed in the university of Granada (Universidad de Granada [http://www.ugr.es]) can be “ten times faster”. This program can generate more than 1000 extinction operations in one second, which allows the expert to obtain plans of action very quickly. Besides, computer engineers of Granada do not only want the system to generate plans, but also to determinate alternative strategies, “offering not just an A plan, but options B, C, or D to choose”, thinks Castillo.

Working with vagueness

But, in such a changing process as a forest fire, the computer system must be able to rectify, adapting to the new circumstances. So, researchers are working on SIADEX feedback, for the program to generate new solutions with from new data provided by the expert of the INFOCA. This redesign must take 3 or 4 minutes. Another feature of this system is that it can work with vagueness, something essential to adapt to real situations.

“SIADEX can ask a plane to refuel in an interval between 10 and 10:30, without asking for a definite time to achieve its own plan”, says the person in charge for the project. On the other hand, access must be simple to make INFOCA´s work easier. The project is also working on this aspect, developing an Internet portal that allows the expert to include and receive information in an easy way. It must be also accessible for political authorities to get to know how resources are mobilized while extinguishing a fire.

If we want SIADEX to be a useful tool it must have updated and accurate information available on technique, human and natural resources involved. The Plan INFOCA has already developed initiatives in this sense, like GPS fire localization systems, digital maps, or computer resources endowment for technicians (portables, PDAs, etc.). In fact, the SIADEX project is the answer of this research group to an announcement of the Plan INFOCA to apply the R&D to fire forests. In 2003 3.48 millions euros were set aside for this reason.

Training tool

But, as in many other fields, the application of new technologies is a question of training. So, as soon as SIADEX will be finished, around the middle of 2006, it will be mainly used as a virtual training system for the fire extinction staff. Castillo emphasizes the willingness showed by the INFOCA experts of the Provincial Operative Centre of Granada about working with new computer tools. This year, the plan provides for an investment in the province of 14 million euros and will mobilize about 700 persons. The total budget of the INFOCA is 101 million euros.

Luis Castillo emphasizes that all the computer development has been carried out in Andalusia “to solve a problem of ours”. The autonomous region has 4.3 million hectares of forest land. According to the data of the Department for the Environment, in 2003 426 burned in Granada, 4.3% of the total of the affected area in Andalusia (9,881 hectares). But fire incidence was much worse last year: according to SEPRONA, 32,143 hectares were devastated in the region, the highest area in the country. Despite these figures, the Plan INFOCA is considered as a reference in the fight against fire: in 2003, it received the National Prize to the best forest fire extinction catch.

Antonio Marín Ruiz | Quelle: alphagalileo
Weitere Informationen: www.ugr.es
prensa.ugr.es/prensa/research/index.php
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Calculi carried out in the UGR will check the existence of rays in Titan’s atmosphere
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06.11.2006
The mission started in 1997, when the satellite Cassini and the probe Huygens started together their trip Saturn, the second biggest planet of the solar system and famous for its rings.

At the end of 2004 they reached their objective and set their division in motion: Cassini, constructed by the NASA, heavier (6 tons), will orbit around the planet until it stops operating in 2008; small Huygens (just 350 kilos), a product of the European space agency (ESA), started its trip to Titan last Christmas and will reach its surface the 14th of January, providing data Cassini will send to Earth.

The main aim of this project, one of the most ambitious in the last 20 years, is checking if there are favourable conditions for life in Saturn and Titan. One of the factors they intend to study is electric activity in the atmosphere of the satellite as, according to one of the main scientific theories on the origin of life on Earth, this process could burst from electric discharges which “broke” the molecules, which where simpler at the beginning, generating more complex structures lead to organic molecules.

Storm measurement

That is why checking Titan’s electric activity is so important. HASI (Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument), is the main instrument to this end. It is situated in Huygens and it has been developed by European scientists with the collaboration of the Andalusian Institute for Astrophysics to cross the 170 kilometres of Titan’s atmosphere, they will carry out measurements that could not be done otherwise. Scientists presume that there must be electric activity, because on Earth, with a less dense atmosphere, about 2,000 storms cause 50 rays per second.

But the question is how to register storms in an experimental way. Different attempts carried out by Cassini, and even by mission Voyager (1980), have been unsuccessful. “The irrefutable proof of electric activity in the atmosphere of a planet or satellite are Schumann´s frequencies”, argues Juan Antonio Morente, researcher of the group ‘Electrodynamics of Transitory Phenomenon’ of the University of Granada (Universidad de Granada [http://www.ugr.es]), supervised by Alfonso Salinas. These frecuencias are like the fingertip of the atmospheric electric activity, as they remain stored in the large “soundbox” formed by the solid surface and the ionosphere.

Schumann predicted by mathematic calculus which would be the frequencies in which there would be electromagnetic resonances on earth’s atmosphere. However, “there is a gap between predictions and measurements, as the ionosphere is a system with leakages due to its high conductivity”, explains Morente. One of his research lines centres on creating numeric models simulating electromagnetic phenomenon in atmospheres of different planets or satellites. The model is based on a three-dimensional circuit called “electric analogue” which works just like the original system, in this case the electromagnetic cavity of the atmosphere.

Atmospheric models

They can be analysed through a computer program also developed by these scientists in the UGR [http://www.ugr.es]. This way, they can predict at what frequency electromagnetic resonances will be detected. The model recreating earth’s atmosphere “predicted with high accuracy the displacement of Schumann’s frequencies due to the leakage related to conductivity”, reminds Morente. Through these works, Konrad Schwingenschuch, of the Graz Institute for Space Research (Austria) and scientific coordinator of the instrument HASI in the mission Cassini-Huygens, got in touch with the researchers of Granada to carry out a model of Titan’s atmosphere.

The scientists of the UGR carried out several models from the present data on Titan’s aeronomy which incorporate different scientific hypotheses on unknown aspects of the satellite, such as the features of its surface or the atmosphere’s conductivity. This work, published in the journal of the American Astronomic Society Icarus in 2002, will be useful as a reference to adjust the measuring the probe Huygens will take of Titan’s activity. According to this model, what do they intend to achieve?

“There may be electric activity but it may not come out due to the density, high deepth and conductivity of the atmosphere. Or there may not be any activity, although it is a very dynamic atmosphere even with at such low temperatures (-180ºC). In any case, it is difficult to predict”, comments Juan Antonio Morente. The collaboration of the research group of Granada with the Graz Institute for Space Research continues in the mission Mars-Netlander, a project of the ESA which intends to study Mars´ magnetic field. The launch is predicted in 2007.

Antonio Marín Ruiz | Quelle: alphagalileo
Weitere Informationen: www.ugr.es
prensa.ugr.es/prensa/research/index.php
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