On May 27, 2025, the first public conference of the Karst Firewall 5.0 Interreg Italy–Slovenia project was held in Sesljan (Sistiana), marking an important milestone in cross-border cooperation for wildfire prevention in the Karst region. The event brought together institutional partners, research institutes, and companies, including Infordata Sistemi, which is developing an innovative AI-based predictive algorithm.
The conference received wide media coverage, demonstrating the significance of the project:
- Koper-Capodistria Television aired two segments (in Italian and Slovenian) focused on the event – [Italian video link] – [Slovenian video link]
- The newspaper of the slovenian community in Italy, Primorski Dnevnik, published a detailed article – [article link]
- Coverage also appeared in Primorske novice, a major newspaper in Slovenia’s Littoral region – [article link]
Key updates included the deployment of thermal drones, the installation of 1,000 IoT “electronic noses” to detect smoke at early stages, mapping and restoring dry-stone walls as natural fire barriers, and experimenting with replacing black pine forests. Infordata presented its AI model, trained on over 8 million weather data points and 38,000 fire incidents, achieving an 85% accuracy rate in identifying wildfire risk conditions.
Karst Firewall 5.0 is a flagship initiative demonstrating how data science and innovation can help address the growing threat of wildfires under climate change through cross-border collaboration.