The Ministry of Environment, Housing and Territorial Planning, through the Natural Heritage Foundation, has published, on the State contracting platform, the tender for the supply and installation of a video surveillance system, detection and monitoring of forest fires in the province of Segovia, for an amount of 731,436 euros. The deadline for submission ends on May 30, 2025.
At present, the forest fire detection system of the Ministry is based, on the one hand, on the calls of any citizen through the 112 emergency telephone and its immediate transfer to those responsible for the extinction. On the other, in its own system formed by fixed surveillance positions, environmental agents and other components of the operation that are in the field and that, in their ordinary function, monitor the appearance of fires, in addition to the surveillance systems by chambers.
Since 2006 and in different provinces of the community, this new system has been implemented that allows you to offer images 365 days a year and 24 hours a day of the areas under video surveillance and, thus, improve the data available to the provincial command centers (CPM). This allows extinction professionals to make decisions based on information and real time. This system, which began experimentally in the province of Soria, is extending to the entire community and the forecast is that it is the main system of identification and location of alerts received in the CPM since 112 and fixed surveillance positions.
The service offered by the surveillance system through cameras has other added functions. In addition to the identification of the alerts, it allows a continuous fire monitoring by those directly responsible for decision making, allowing acting in a more efficient way.
System characteristics
This system has a series of characteristics that make it an effective method:
Monitor the area included around each location within a radius between minimum 8 and maximum 25 kilometers, depending on the characteristics of the system and environmental visibility, and facilitate the provincial CPM to identify the possible spotlights.
Verify the alerts received in the Provincial Command Centers (CPM) and avoid false alarms and with it deployment of unnecessary means to be able to visualize the area object of the alarm in real time.
Allow geoposing the point that is being displayed.
Allow the real -time visualization of the fire and affected area, monitoring the fires from the first moments of their evolution.
Reduce the response time of extinction media thanks to a prompt location of the spotlights throughout the year.
File for the analysis and subsequent statistics the alarms produced, registering dates and images.
Follow up on controlled burns that are developed in the area of influence.
Other functions related to the protection of the natural heritage of the community.
This system is managed from the CPM and from the CAM (Autonomic Center of Command) through software that facilitates the programming of the cameras of the different locations to offer real -time images as required. The management software allows its integration into the CPM and CAM and also combine it with a set of tools that offer the technicians responsible for the fire management a valuable information.
The system in the province of Palencia
This impulse is intended to implement this video surveillance system in the province of Palencia, in order to expand in the community this network of video surveillance cameras, which facilitate the identification and discrimination of alerts, as well as the monitoring of forest fires. The objective is to cover the highest possible percentage of the province, prioritizing in the areas of greatest vulnerability in relation to forest fires.
A visibility study of fixed surveillance positions of the infocal operation has been carried out determining the surface located in visual from these positions and the surface on which there is no direct observation. From this analysis, the most interesting locations have been sought so that the total area observed directly in the province is improved and increased.
The surveillance and detection system of the province of Palencia has 14 fixed surveillance positions, fundamentally distributed throughout the northern half of the province and the southeast half. There will be 17 cameras that will offer the CPM the same visual that can observe the 14 surveillance positions adding that of another 3 more locations, now covering half southwest.
The cameras will be installed in the infrastructure of the surveillance stalls, taking advantage of the fact that they are high infrastructure on the ground and located in dominant points of the Palencia orography. In this way, visual visuals are obtained, becoming fire alerts more than 25 km away thanks to the zoom of these cameras.
Of the total of the 805,269 hectares of surface of the province of Palencia, the video surveillance system will cover a potential surface of some 700,000 hectares, of which they will have in direct visual 454,600, 44 % of the province.
