Integrated mobile veld fire detection and notification system for rural communities: A case of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia

Socio-economic and environmental impacts of veld fires are acknowledged, documented and widely discussed at different forums. However, what is largely missing are solutions to reduce occurrence of veld fires mostly in rural areas. Literature also suggests that veld fires are to increase (more intense and long burning) with warming (hot and dry conditions – climate change). This is likely to affect rural poor households who largely depend on land-based natural resources (field crops, forests harvest, grazing land); with limited access to fire brigades, that mainly serves urban cities. With warming (drier and hotter conditions), rural areas who share boundaries with mountains, rangelands, forests and wetlands are predicted to face greater threats from veld fires because of the dry flammable biomass in these areas. Against these drawbacks and leveraging high mobile phones ownership and network coverage in rural areas, we present an integrated mobile application for veld fire detection and notification prototype rural households can use to identify high fire danger areas and burning fires in near real time close to their location.