MTS, a leading Russian mobile operator, and RMS, an innovation company from the city of Nizhny Novgorod, are teaming up to fight forest fires in the Republic of Komi, which is located in Northwest Russia. As a part of this endeavor, MTS will use its mobile infrastructure, and RMS will use its Forest Patrol technology.
The project was announced earlier this month by the Skolkovo Foundation as RMS is a resident of the Skolkovo innovation hub currently under construction outside Moscow.
Video cameras mounted on MTS’ base telecom towers enable watchers to scan forest territory up to 30km away in sunny weather conditions, support remote control of an alarm system, and automatically send a signal to alert on smoke in an area.
The equipment includes special routers that use MTS’ secure telecommunications channels to transmit fire images to the operators of Forest Patrol, a sophisticated IT-enabled product that Marchmont News reported on in detail in a recent feature story.
Today, five MTS towers are equipped with surveillance cameras. The mobile operator and a relevant Komi government authority are currently in talks to install monitoring equipment on two more base towers.
