This past year several places in the world got hit by megafires, which individual fires that burn more than 40.000 hectares. Portugal got hit by the biggest megafire, that they have experienced so far, consuming more than 5000 km2. The western United States was next, in December, with megafires consuming more than 1000 km2 of land (Wikipedia. 2018) and latest this march in Australia. It is definitely a problem, but fires are nothing new. The new factor is that climate change according to studies, is responsible for the increase of the megafires intensity, which means that the problems are getting worse. With firetrucks, firefighters, helicopters, fire planes and so forth, why is it not a decreasing problem? And why do the existing prevention solutions like watchtowers and camera surveillance not cope with the problem?
This project is trying to understand and research these problematics and, via a study trip to Portugal, collecting data from the Municipality of Mação to understand how they see the problem as authorities, firefighters, and the locals.
With this data, the product, WilD - Wildfire Detection, have been developed for eucalyptus trees, targeting the Portuguese plantation owner in Mação but with the potential for later expansion.
- Spring 2018 -
My area of responsibility
As in all other projects we work together in the early phases of the project. To get the team aligned. This means that some smaller tasks will be divided out such as user mapping, competitor mapping, stakeholder mapping etc. Other tasks like ideation with sketching are done together.
Later on, bigger tasks were divided among the team members, like making the prototype, the 3D printing, testing and writing the report.
Graphic design
Both report layout, illustrations and render refinement in the Adobe suite was my area.
Product report
Business and budget​
In this project I was the main designer of the business case and I was responsible for the budget.
Project management
I kept track of the project and managed meetings as well as appointments.​
