The German Federal Environmental Foundation (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, DBU) has granted a funding of 125,000 Euros to CAURUS Technologies. The grant supports the further development of the startup company’s novel forest firefighting system integrating digital technology with modern firefighting engineering. It will be paid out in instalments over a period of 24 months and aims to support salaries as well as the construction of a second prototype of the system’s sensor platform.
“We are proud of this recognition and are even more delighted that we now have additional freedom to work on a second sensor module. We aim at improving the way incident commands monitor firefighting missions and measure extinguishing efficiency. We are also looking forward to further develop technical solutions for the dispersion extinguishing module. With it we expect to deliver water from high altitudes directly to the fire core in an aerosol-water cloud,” says Philippe Telle, CEO and Co-Founder of CAURUS Technologies.
Climate change drives increase in forest fires
With its funding the DBU supports innovative solutions for effective forest fire fighting. These are much needed, because climate change induced drier and hotter weather has caused forest fires to increase both in occurrence and in intensity over recent years. At the same time, water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. In addition, forest fires have started to contribute greatly to global CO2 emissions. According to the Europe-wide research service Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), around 6,450 megatons of climate-damaging carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2) were produced by forest fires worldwide in 2021. By comparison, fossil energy caused CO2 emissions of around 2,600 megatons in the entire EU in 2020. There is a need for innovations, says DBU Secretary General Alexander Bonde : “Because particularly dry areas are affected by fires, saving water can be vital. Every forest saved and every reduction in emissions is enormously important for climate protection.”
Next level development of sensor & dispersion extinguishing
CAURUS Technologies wants to use the funding to further test and finetune the sensor platform in the short-term to get it ready for the market. In parallel, the team plans to work on its dispersion extinguishing module, including a. o. increasing the effectiveness of the aerosol cloud, making the material composition of the water container more environmentally friendly and getting the module ready for field testing. Looking into the future, CAURUS Technologies is planning to rightsize the system for use on drones. “This would enable us to fight the source of the fire with precision, while keeping human lives out of the equation”, says Philippe Telle.
Caurus Technologies is developing a modular system that aims to digitize the way water is dropped onto wildfires to improve fire extinguishing precision, efficiency and safety of all involved forces. CAURUS Technologies was founded in 2022 by a team of engineering, management and finance professionals with combined 120 years of experience in aerospace and defense technology, corporate development and finance. The sensor model is ready for inflight testing. Interested parties can find more information here: https://caurus-technologies.com/produkte/
With its Green Startup funding, the DBU supports young founders who develop solutions for the environment, ecology and sustainability in an innovative and economically viable way. https://www.dbu.de/startup.