Dryad Networks Obtains $2.1 Million for IoT-based Wildfire Detection Network

Dryad Networks, an environmental startup, recently announced it has secured over $2 million in seed funding to develop an Internet of Things (IoT) network to provide ultra-early detection of wildfires. They’ve dubbed it the Internet of Trees. The proposed solution will use a network of sensors that can detect wildfires in 60 minutes or less after ignition, even in the most remote areas. This is in sharp contrast to existing detection methods that use cameras and satellites and can take hours or days to detect a fire.

See also: AI Used to Prevent Californian Wildfires

According to the company, the Internet of Trees includes:

• Solar-powered sensors using AI to detect gases emitted from wildfires at the smoldering stage as well as temperature, humidity, and air pressure.
• Gateways featuring Dryad’s patent-pending distributed mesh network architecture – an extension to the LoRaWAN open standard for long-range radio IoT networks.
• A cloud-based dashboard to analyze and monitor a wide range of indicators and alert forest managers.

Dryad hopes to digitize the forest and help protect and regrow the world’s most important carbon sinks. It wants to help both public and private forest owners improve their monitoring and analytics to protect forests. They’ll do this by providing real-time insights into health, growth, and micro-climate to make forest management more efficient and cost-effective.

Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO and co-founder of Dryad Networks, said: “The notion of the intelligent forest is finally coming of age. Using a solar-powered, distributed mesh IoT network capable of covering vast expanses of forest where mobile network coverage is lacking will radically transform the way forests can be monitored and managed. Our vision is to deliver an effective communications architecture for even the most remote forests and make sub-one-hour wildfire detection the new reality,” he observed.