Sweden’s forests cover roughly 70 percent of the country’s land area and are vital to the economy, biodiversity, carbon storage, and national resilience. But forests are increasingly exposed to threats that can cause rapid, large-scale damage — wildfires, storm felling, bark beetle outbreaks, and unauthorised logging. The 2018 wildfire season and storm Gudrun in 2005 demonstrated how quickly forest losses can escalate and how difficult it is to maintain situational awareness across such vast areas. Skogsstyrelsen, the Swedish Forest Agency, is responsible for monitoring forest resources and coordinating response to forest damage, but current methods rely heavily on ground reporting and periodic aerial surveys that may miss fast-developing events.
In this challenge, teams will build systems that automatically detect fires, logging activity, storm damage, or other significant forest changes. By combining vegetation indices derived from Sentinel-2 optical imagery with radar backscatter data from Sentinel-1 — which can detect structural changes in the forest canopy regardless of cloud cover or daylight — participants can develop solutions such as:
- Automated alert systems that flag rapid forest loss events — such as active fires, clear-cuts, or windthrow — within days of occurrence by comparing successive satellite passes
- Change maps that classify the type and severity of detected disturbances, distinguishing between fire scars, storm damage, insect mortality, and harvesting activity
- Time-series analysis tools that track gradual forest degradation — such as spreading bark beetle infestations or drought stress — before they become large-scale losses
- Early warning dashboards for Skogsstyrelsen, county administrative boards, and emergency services to prioritise field inspections and coordinate response efforts
Skogsstyrelsen oversees the sustainable management of Sweden’s 28 million hectares of forest land and coordinates national efforts in forest protection and damage assessment. Satellite-based detection at scale would strengthen their capacity to identify emerging threats earlier, allocate inspection resources more efficiently, and provide timely information to rescue services and civil defence actors. In a total defence context, forests are also relevant as strategic resources for energy, construction materials, and terrain that affects military mobility.
The goal is to demonstrate how satellite data and AI can enable near-continuous forest surveillance — moving from delayed, report-driven awareness to proactive, automated detection that supports both everyday forest management and rapid crisis response.