Forest dept to get real time fire alerts

Mumbai: The state forest department will get fire alerts on a real time basis, according to officials. The Forest Survey of India will send fire alerts to the state forest department at regular intervals to escalate the dousing process in case of forest fires. The state has rec-eived the highest number of alerts for forest fires during the past year.

This is the first time that any state will receive real time alerts for fire incidents in forests. The initiative was started earlier this week, following which, the state forest department set up control room where it can monitor the alerts sent by the FSI.

“The alerts will be monitored on the geospatial portal which will also display the location of the fire incident. The time and date of the incident will also be recorded. We will be alerting the forest staff at the ground level to control the fire,” said Praveen Srivastava, additional principal chief conservator of forests (information and technology).

The system will only be accessible to forest officials who can access details through the identity and password allotted to them.

The FSI has shared thematic maps with the state forest department, which will also help in categorising the forests and areas and analyse whether a dense forest, open forest or scrubs are experiencing fire incidents.

With the compartment boundaries given in the map, it will also help determine whether the fire incidents are occurring inside or outside the forest boundaries.