Zak Campbell-Lochrie - School of Engineering What problem are you trying to solve?Amidst the challenges posed by climate change and altered land usage, the UK, and particularly Scotland, faces escalating wildfire risks, which were highlighted by record-breaking wildfire incidents in 2025. Traditional land management techniques like muirburning are on the decline, and increasing efforts in afforestation, rewilding, and peatland restoration, essential to the UK's climate mitigation goals, are changing the vegetative landscapes and, consequently, wildfire dynamics. The current wildfire risk assessments, heavily reliant on broad meteorological data and models ill-suited for UK-specific vegetation, fail to provide the precision needed for effective localised risk management.What is your idea?My innovation proposes the development of a low-cost, robust, and scalable data assimilation platform that integrates open-source satellite data with bespoke, in-situ data gathering tools, including weather sensors and specially designed fuel moisture sensors. These technologies are calibrated for key UK vegetation types and aim to provide dynamic, site-specific wildfire risk assessments. This platform will equip land managers, environmental agencies, and emergency services with the tools to make informed, real-time decisions about wildfire prevention and management, potentially transforming how wildfire risks are monitored and mitigated at a localised level. This article was published on 2025-11-17
