The Hephaesnus Project aims to fight forest fires in a safer, more effective and sustainable way, through innovative prevention and combat solutions.
Welcome to a new innovation in preventing and fighting forest fires. At Hephaesnus we develop content and technology that help our entire society and current firefighting means (air, firemen and civil protection) to prevent and fight forest fires in a safer, more effective and sustainable way.
Because fighting wildfires is much more than just planning how to put water on the flames . Unfortunately, Portugal has revealed worrying numbers: The number of fires remains very high (about 90,000 in the last 5 years. Source: ICNF ), but the number of volunteer firefighters has fallen by almost half since the beginning of the 21st century (Source: Pordata ) . Due to the climate changes that are already being felt, fires also have increasingly complex behaviors, and there is no open sharing of information and investigation of these themes together with the fire departments and populations. At the same time, there is a lack of innovation in fighting forest fires, with the same methods being used for several years.
Fortunately, there is Hephaesnus . At Hephaesnus we do not intend to revolutionise or radically change the way fires are fought. We intend to be a cooperative and integrative complement so that future tragedies can be avoided.
We have 2 products under development : A knowledge-sharing platform on fire behavior and for the prevention of dangerous behavior, and a cooperative technology for fighting forest fires.
Our platform is mainly based on the creation of content that allows an easy learning of technical content resulting from scientific research in order to mitigate unnecessary risks in firefighting and optimize efficiency. At the same time, we intend to promote the role of the volunteer firefighter in Portugal, in order to ensure that young generations feel motivated to become firefighters. The objective will be to extend this knowledge to the populations, provide training and make this content available to populations in areas at high risk of forest fire. We anticipate that this platform will be able to reduce the number of negligence fires and forest fire victims.
Our forest firefighting technology aims above all to act as an instrument of additional safety, efficiency and sustainability, by allowing aerial means to carry out combat at night, and by allowing fire brigades to respond to fire from more distant locations in a safer environment. Our solution consists in a propulsion device, easily attachable to the current forest fire fighting vehicles used by fire brigades, which will fire projectiles and which carry our innovative extinguishing charge inside.
After being fired, our projectiles disintegrate when they come into contact with the flames, thus releasing their extinguishing charge and extinguishing the flames. These projectiles are manufactured with industrial by-products, in a circular economy perspective, and our extinguishing charge is 100% environmentally friendly. At this moment, and through the scientific tests already carried out, we can guarantee a range of 350m with this solution. This will enable a greater and better 1st response by the operators, protection of heritage (factories, houses) through a coordinated attack, and above all a safer, more efficient and sustainable fight. Our projectiles can also be adapted and used by aerial means, in order to enable them to fight fires at night from high altitude, an action that was impossible until now. In this way, we will guarantee a greater efficiency of the current means, giving them an intensive but appropriate use.
However, and after all these developments since the project was founded in 2021, Hephaesnus now needs everyone's support to continue to leverage its development in the coming months, so that this solution is on the market as soon as possible. We count on your help in a safer, efficient, sustainable and cooperative firefighting for Portugal!
