The Green Triangle Fire Alliance (GTFA) has signed a pilot contract for OroraTech’s satellite-based Wildfire Intelligence Service over the 2021/22 fire season. Located along the border between South Australia and Victoria, the Green Triangle constitutes 17% of Australia’s plantations - over 320,000 hectares of pine and eucalypt trees.

GTFA heatmap over Australia captured by OroraTech on March 31, 2020

“The decision to progress to a pilot phase over the 2021/2022 fire season has come about following evaluation of OroraTech’s system over a number of months.” states Anthony Walsh, GTFA’s Manager. The system will be used complementary with other technologies like fire spotting towers and stationary cameras to detect fires immediately. “It will be very interesting to see how this changes as OroraTech launches its own CubeSats that will increase coverage.”

Relationships between OroraTech and the Green Triangle reach back to late 2019 and a collaboration with the University of South Australia. “After helping to protect New South Wales and Tasmania against bushfires since mid-2020, we are very excited to expand our monitoring toward the forest areas in South Australia and Victoria.” says OroraTech’s co-founder Björn Stoffers. The company has developed a platform using 19 different satellite data sources to detect and monitor forest fires around the world. With the launch of their first own satellite in January 2022 and the expansion to a larger constellation, OroraTech will further improve detection times.