The Sociedad de Productores Forestales (SPF) is a civil association that since 1959 has brought together the actors of the forestry sector production chain. Nearly 90% of the forests planted in Uruguay for industrial purposes belong to its members, including UPM, Montes del Plata, Compañía Forestal Uruguaya, Forestal Atlántico Sur and Agro Empresa Forestal.
Its objective is to promote the sustainable development of the industry in economic, social and environmental terms. Its activities include promoting the development of plantations and the conservation of natural forests in the country. Looking abroad, the SPF works to improve the commercial insertion and positioning of this Uruguayan sector in the world.
As part of its functions, the SPF oversees the care of green areas distributed throughout the national territory.
The challenge
When summer arrives, high temperatures increase the likelihood of forest fire risk. The SPF has the capacity to quickly detect fires and has its own response teams, both on the ground and in the air, which are located in areas close to the plantations.
However, once the response teams were deployed in the territory, the association lacked an effective method of real-time communication between the response teams and with the command center. This lack made it difficult to coordinate actions between different teams, to communicate changes in a squad's course or destination, and to keep the command center and the parties involved in the actions informed.
The particularity of the terrain, with trees over 20 meters high and poor cellular coverage, was one of the main technical challenges.
The project
The SPF relied on Isbel to address this problem. After evaluating different solutions together, we came up with a proposal to secure mission-critical operations.
Thus, we designed, implemented and will support a solution that centralizes communications in a command center in the interior of the country, strategically located in the department of Durazno. This proposal simplifies coordination between teams in real time: now, each group can communicate with all the others and with the command center, not only with its own base.
We designed a radio frequency plan and installed radio equipment in five key areas of the forest, which communicate with vehicles and hand-held devices in the VHF band. The radio equipment and the command center are securely interconnected via internet to a data center hosted in a cloud within the national territory, where the central system is located.
To minimize the initial investment, the system was designed to support the handies that SPF's various partners already had.
Current status
We are currently finalizing the installation at all sites and have successfully passed the acceptance tests and protocols. Next summer, the solution will be ready to go live.
From Isbel we are proud to contribute with our knowledge and technology in projects that impact in key productive activities for the country, as well as in preventing critical situations for the environment and society.
