German startup Dryad Networks raises €1.8M for wildfire detection solution

Berlin-based environmental IoT startup Dryad Networks has secured seed funding of €1.8 million from STIHL Digital, the investor arm of the STIHL chainsaw multinational, German energy firm LEAG, impact investor ISAR AG, and the VC firm Brandenburg Kapital, the company says in its statement

Dryad Networks develops a large-scale wireless IoT network for the ultra-early detection of wildfires, as well as health & growth monitoring solutions for public and private forest owners. At the core of its products is a network of solar-powered sensors that are able to spot the fire in under 60 minutes even in remote areas, while camera and satellite-based solutions need several hours or even days. 

Dryad’s wireless environmental sensor network based on LoRaWAN, the leading open-standard for long-range IoT. Collected data is processed using cloud-based big-data tools for analytics, monitoring and alerting. This technology makes it economically viable to build a communications network for large forests where there is no mobile network coverage.

The company will spend the proceeds on further developing the process of digitizing the world’s forests. “The notion of the intelligent forest is now coming of age. Our vision is to deliver an effective communications architecture for even the most remote forests and make sub-one-hour wildfire detection the new reality,” Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO and co-founder of Dryad Networks, emphasized.