Funding Amount: £9335.69
Funder: GCRF@Essex Engagement fund – Research Pump Priming
Dates: Start Date 15/02/2020 & End Date 15/07/2020
Role: PI
Co-PI @Essex: Dr Saugat Bhattacharyya Collaborator: Dr Vishal Krishna Singh, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Lucknow, India

Aim

India falls in “Lower Middle-Income Countries Upper Middle-Income Countries and Territories” category of “DAC List of ODA Recipients Effective for reporting on aid in 2018 and 2019”. Uttarakhand in India is a forest and biodiversity rich Himalayan state with 45.32% of its geographical area under forest cover. The forest fires in Uttarakhand has major impact on ecological system that may have a lasting impact on the Himalayan glaciers and cause them to melt faster. In this project, we have outlined challenges and proposed solution, which are in line with the SGD13, SDG15, and SGD 17. The following impacts and benefits are expected such as identification of the key region and important factors of fire and enable to take preventive measure, a well structure dataset and data analysis tool to be published in open source, and knowledge exchanges activities between the partners to develop research capacity. By supporting this work and the formation of this new collaboration, the research will impact on the lives of the trees and forest at risk of developing fire. We will assure the robustness of the evidence by submitting our scientific work to the peer-reviewed top-level journals and conference. It is also important to note that in 2019, in UK there are 79 major wildfires were reported. Therefore, our initial results can pave the way for larger studies, which may include using drone to capture images and using computer vision to build a robust system, which can provide us with stronger evidence-based early-detection and prevention system for the forest fire.