Hackathon Munich March 2025
Victor Scott Prieto Ruiz, German Aerospace Center (DLR)
In March 2025, several TEMA partners gathered at the German Aerospace Center (German: DLR) campus in Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich. This meeting helped each TEMA partner test their components working in real time for historical forest fire and flood scenarios. This was the first test of the TEMA platform with hardware distributed between a cloud site, located on the DLR campus and an edge site, chosen to be physically separate to simulate the realities of the pilot trial.
Field Testing
The edge team performed tests with hardware at a former airport located in Erding, an hour away from the DLR campus. This site was chosen because it allows scientific tests involving drones, and provided an opportunity to test the communication infrastructure and transportation the edge team will use for its future trial.
As part of the tests at Erding, the TEMA team placed heat sources in the form of a mini charcoal grill and an electric hotplate. Both sources were visible from 40m and stuck out in the thermal camera provided by the University of Sevilla. Little smoke was visible from the charcoal grill in the images.
The DLR plans on extending these tests to test their Ground Sensor Network, which will measure trace gases and particle matter, as well as weather conditions, in real time on the pilot trial sites.
Integration Testing
The Edge team met in a remote area to test infrastructure and network connectivity in preparations for the pilot trials for TEMA technology. Both Starlink and 4G connectivity were tested. Upload speeds of about 15mbps were observed with satellite-based Starlink, and faster speeds with 4G. The speeds correspond to transmission of one drone image every 2 or 3 seconds, which TEMA decided would be adequate for the forest fire pilot trials. Furthermore, the edge team was able to transmit simulated data over these communications methods to the TEMA platform.
The Cloud team met on base in the DLR campus and tested that platform components were able to work together to provide an output for both flood and forest fire trials. The infrastructure the University of Messina (UNIME) provided gave the edge and cloud integration These tests showed that components from the tens of partners in this project were able to work with each other and forward their information to the TEMA front end.
End User Feedback
Crucially, during this hackathon event, end users, such as Regional Agency for Civil Protection of Sardinia (RAS), Kainuu Rescue department (KAJ) and the Bavarian Red Cross (BRK), were able to see a demonstration of the TEMA platform in action.
Summary
This event gave a good opportunity for partners to test their components in a coherent way and receive feedback from end users. The TEMA team looks forward to applying their hard work towards real trials in Sardinia this June, where the platform will be tested against a mock trial for forest fires.