Wildflyer
Wildflyer is a data platform for fire services, safety regions, and forestry agencies that solves a fundamental problem in European wildfire response: fragmentation. Today, fire analysts across Europe spend hours copy-pasting data from multiple weather websites into PowerPoint to produce semi-professional danger reports. Critical intelligence from drones, sensors, cameras, and AI models sits in disconnected silos. Safety regions cannot easily share real-time information with neighboring regions or across borders — even during fast-moving wildfire events where coordination is life-critical. Wildflyer addresses this by providing an integrated platform that aggregates weather data into wildfire-specific danger forecasts, enables agencies to collect and organize fire data (perimeters, dates, media), and serves as a hub where diverse data sources — drones, cameras, sensors, AI models — plug in through a single intuitive interface. Our next development phase, which is the focus of this application, takes this further: we are building deep integrations with local communication systems between safety regions, enabling real-time cross-regional and cross-border intelligence sharing. This means a safety region in the south of France can share live situational data with a neighboring Italian region during a wildfire event — without phone calls, emails, or manual data transfers. The platform is already operational in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Italy, used by SDIS 13 (Bouches-du-Rhône) and SDIS 30 (Gard), the two most wildfire-prone departments in France, and the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security. The next-generation interoperability layer is currently at TRL 5 — validated with one live integration and five more underway — building on this proven foundation. Wildflyer is steward-owned: for-profit but mission-bound, ensuring long-term commitment to the public interest.
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Wildflyer's ambition is to become the connective layer that enables real-time intelligence sharing between safety regions across Europe during wildfire and disaster events. The current reality is stark: Europe's safety regions operate as information islands. Each region has its own systems, data formats, and communication protocols. When a wildfire crosses regional or national borders — an increasingly common scenario due to climate change — coordination breaks down. Incident commanders resort to phone calls, email, and improvised workarounds. Critical time is lost. Decisions are made with incomplete information. Our solution directly addresses DIREKTION's identified capability gaps in interoperable communications (CG5) and integration of information (CG4). By building deep integrations with the local communication systems that safety regions already use, we eliminate the interoperability barrier at its source. Rather than asking organizations to adopt yet another new system, we connect to their existing infrastructure and enable seamless data exchange. The ambition eventually extends beyond wildfires. The cross-regional communication layer we are building is designed to be hazard-agnostic, but in our experience it is a distinct vertical. Later, the same infrastructure that shares wildfire intelligence between regions in southern France can share flood data between regions in the Netherlands and Germany, or coordinate cross-border HAZMAT response. We are building the interoperability backbone that European disaster resilience currently lacks. This is not theoretical. We already operate across four countries and serve organizations at both local and national government level. The next step — plugging into local communication networks — is the natural evolution that our users are actively requesting.
Wildflyer's innovation lies not in building another standalone tool, but in solving the integration problem that prevents existing tools from creating impact at scale. The European disaster resilience ecosystem is rich with innovative technologies: AI-powered detection, drone surveillance, satellite imagery, advanced weather modeling. Yet most of these remain trapped in pilot projects or used by a handful of specialists. The reason is simple — there is no connective tissue. Each technology is a point solution that requires its own interface, training, and data pipeline. Wildflyer acts as that connective tissue. Our platform architecture is built around the principle that adding a new data source — whether a drone feed, a sensor network, or an AI model — should be as simple as plugging in a new card. No retraining. No disruption. The 300 field workers who already use the platform simply see richer information appearing in their familiar interface. The specific innovation in this development phase is our approach to cross-regional communication. Rather than building a proprietary communication network (the approach that has repeatedly failed in European emergency response), we build integration bridges to the systems regions already use. This is a fundamental architectural choice: we adapt to the ecosystem rather than asking the ecosystem to adapt to us. We have deep respect for actors and data already deployed. This approach breaks with the conventional model where interoperability requires everyone to adopt the same platform. Instead, we enable heterogeneous systems to share structured data through lightweight, standardized integration layers. This is both a technological innovation (adaptive API architecture) and a usage innovation (adoption without disruption). Our steward-ownership model ensures this innovation remains aligned with public interest rather than being captured by commercial incentives to create lock-in.
Wildflyer resolves three concrete operational problems that fire services and safety regions face daily. First: situational awareness fragmentation. Today, a fire analyst preparing a danger assessment must manually visit multiple weather websites, extract relevant data, and compile it into a presentable format. This process takes hours and produces inconsistent outputs. Wildflyer automates this entirely — aggregating weather data into wildfire-specific danger forecasts that can be generated in minutes and shared instantly across the organization. Second: data integration gaps. When a drone survey produces imagery, when a camera network detects smoke, when a weather station records anomalous conditions — each data stream exists in its own system. Wildflyer provides a single platform where all these inputs converge, giving incident commanders a unified operational picture rather than scattered fragments. Third, and most critically: cross-regional coordination failure. When a wildfire escapes an initial attack, many safety regions and disciplines quickly become involved. This leads to information gaps and dangerous situations. There is currently no standardized way to share real-time operational data between the responding organizations. Our next-generation interoperability layer directly solves this by connecting the local communication systems these regions already use, enabling live data sharing without manual intervention. We do not envision to become 'the standard', but flex around what is there, adopting local standards. The operational impact is measurable. Our current users report reducing danger report preparation time from several hours to under 15 minutes. The cross-regional capability, once deployed, will eliminate the communication delays that currently cost critical response time during multi-region events — delays that can mean the difference between containment and catastrophe.
Wildflyer is led by a lean, cross-functional team of three. Daan Aerts (Founder) brings product vision, technical leadership, and deep relationships with fire services across Europe. Lucie Boulat (Lead Partnerships France) drives adoption with French SDIS departments and EU-level partnerships. Ana Ferrari (Customer Success Engineer) ensures operational deployment and user training. The team combines Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish languages and international perspectives with local roots.
Wildflyer is led by a lean, cross-functional team of three. Daan Aerts (Founder) brings product vision, technical leadership, and deep relationships with fire services across Europe. Lucie Boulat (Lead Partnerships France) drives adoption with French SDIS departments and EU-level partnerships. Ana Ferrari (Customer Success Engineer) ensures operational deployment and user training. The team combines Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish languages and international perspectives with local roots.