We ensure the operation of critical communications for forest producers in Uruguay

The Forest Producers Society (SPF) is a civil association that has brought together the actors of the forest sector's production chain since 1959. About 90% of the planted forests in Uruguay for industrial purposes belong to its members, including UPM, Montes del Plata, Compañía Forestal Uruguaya, Forestal Atlántico Sur, and Agro Empresa Forestal.

Its objective is to promote the sustainable development of the industry from an economic, social, and environmental perspective. Among its activities is promoting the development of plantations and the conservation of natural forests in the country. Externally, the SPF works to improve the commercial integration and positioning of this Uruguayan sector in the world.

As part of its functions, the SPF ensures the care of the green areas distributed throughout the national territory.

The challenge

When summer arrives, high temperatures increase the likelihood of forest fire risk. The SPF has the capacity to quickly detect fire hotspots and has its own response teams, both terrestrial and aerial, which are located in areas near the plantations.

However, once the response teams were deployed in the field, the association lacked an effective real-time communication method that would allow communication between the response teams and the command center. This lack made it difficult to coordinate actions between different teams, communicate changes in direction or destination of any squad, as well as keep the command center and the parties involved in the actions informed.

The particularity of the terrain, with trees over 20 meters tall and scarce cellular coverage, constituted one of the main technical challenges.

The project

The SPF entrusted Isbel to address this problem. After evaluating different solutions together, we arrived at a proposal that ensures the operations of critical missions.

In this way, we designed, implemented, and will provide support for a solution that centralizes communications in a command center located strategically in the interior of the country, in the department of Durazno. This proposal simplifies real-time coordination between teams: now, each group can communicate with all the others and with the command center, not just with its own base.

We designed a plan for radio frequencies and installed radio equipment in five key forest areas, which communicate with the vehicles and handheld radios on the VHF band. The radio equipment and the command center are interconnected securely via the internet, to a data center hosted in a cloud within the national territory, where the central system is located.

To minimize the initial investment, the system was designed to support the handheld radios that the different SPF partners already had.

Current status

Currently, we have completed the installation at all sites and successfully passed the acceptance tests and protocols. Next summer, the solution will be up and running.

At Isbel, we are proud to contribute our knowledge and technology to projects that impact key productive activities for the country, as well as prevent critical situations for the environment and society.