The Italian pilot field exercise of the TREEADS project was held on October 28th and 29th, 2024, in Sorrento in Campania Region, Italy. The specific field exercise was focusing on a Fire detection and Response simulation in real environment in the effort of improving response time in protected forest areas.
Day 1: Activity presentation and clustering
On October 28th, the activities started in the Municipality of Sorrento main office.
The activities directly involved Sorrento, STRESS, Frontiers Innovation, EFB and PUI with the invited participation of the Municipalities of Massa Lubrense and Piano di Sorrento together with their Civil Protection commands and related volunteer groups.
Participants from FRN and MAICH also joined the event.
The first day was dedicated to an initial introduction of the TREEADS project and of overall Italian pilot activities.
Then the specific technologies related to the Resilient, event-driven, context-aware fire detection and decision support for response processes were presented. The activities include the simulating of intelligent fire detection and monitoring capabilities and the activation of an automated mechanisms to support timely decisions and appropriate reactions to specific situations.
The filed exercise was also a Clustering occasion with sister Project SILVANUS. An invited researcher from CMCC (partner in SILVANUS Project) presented their activities in SILVANUS and shared their feedback in relation to the TREEADS Pilot Demonstration.
After the Silvanus presentation TREEADS the first day activities were completed with a presentation by PUI and by a field visit to “Le Tore” protected area where drone Pilots from PUI have demonstrated some intervention with a brief flight with Infra-Red Sensor survey.
Day 2: On field operations simulation.
The Municipality of Sorrento main office was used to simulate the Treads Holistic Platform Control Room.
An additional briefing on the activities was given by STRESS, EFB and FI to the other involved partners.
The Municipal Police offices of Sorrento, Piano di Sorrento and Massa Lubrense have played their institutional role of Civil Protection Municipal Coordination Centres (COC- Centri Operativi Comunali). 
A fire spread simulation by USAL modelling tool was used to simulate an ongoing fire (yellow sensors turning red).
While the various COCs were activated upon reception of the alert from the FI and EFB tools, (light blue Stars turning red) the fire simulation continued and the local Volunteer teams were activated by each COC (light blue squares turning red).
The real life execution of the project consisted in the volunteer teams moving from their initial position and, based on the directions of the COCs, reaching the area of the simulated fire (red squares moving on the map).
Finally, the volunteer groups met in the Le Tore Area.
The times from fire detection to start of intervention were measured and compared with the average time elapsed from the reporting of the event to the real regional Operations Room and the start of the intervention. The filed exercise was successful, demonstrating that the Treeads technologies contribute to a sensible decrease in the alert, reporting and start of the intervention times.
