Greece has launched a wildfire management system based on nanosatellites and artificial intelligence. A model that other countries are now looking to replicate.
Among the European countries most vulnerable to wildfires is undoubtedly Greece. In 2025, more than 50,000 hectares burned, and the trend has been steadily worsening in recent years due to climate change, particularly prolonged droughts and increasingly intense heatwaves.
For years, local authorities have been working to tackle this growing emergency. Now, Greece has become a technological leader in wildfire management. It is the first country in the world to integrate a dedicated satellite constellation into its national firefighting system. The system consists of four nanosatellites capable of detecting even very small fire hotspots, combined with artificial intelligence that analyses the data, filters out false alarms and relays information directly to emergency response teams. Hundreds of drones provide additional aerial surveillance, improving situational awareness. The technology is also making it easier to identify those responsible for starting fires and could soon be exported to other European countries.
According to a report by WWF Greece and the National Observatory of Athens, 2025 was one of the worst wildfire years of the past two decades, both in terms of the total area burned and the number of fires. The figures show 47,828 hectares burned and a 39 per cent increase in the number of wildfires compared with the 2006–2024 average. Including smaller fires that were not officially mapped, the total exceeds 50,000 hectares. The social, economic and environmental impacts were severe. Carbon emissions generated by the 2025 fires were the seventh highest recorded since 2003, while the destruction of homes and critical infrastructure resulted in recovery costs exceeding 165 million euros.
However, 2025 was not an exception. Climate change, together with increasingly severe heatwaves and prolonged dry seasons, is making extreme wildfire seasons the new normal in Greece. The country has endured increasingly destructive fires for years. Among the most devastating were the 2018 wildfires, which reached the outskirts of Athens and killed around 100 people, and the 2023 blaze that swept across Western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia, becoming the largest wildfire ever recorded in Europe since monitoring began.
In the summer of 2026, Greece gained a powerful new ally in the fight against wildfires: space technology. In May, in partnership with the German company OroraTech, four nanosatellites equipped with thermal sensors were launched. They can detect fire hotspots covering areas smaller than four square metres, whereas conventional satellites generally identify fires only once they have grown to the size of a cruise ship.
Supporting the nanosatellites are artificial intelligence models that enable the Hellenic Space Center (HSC) to process incoming data in real time, eliminate false alarms caused by solar panels and other heat-retaining infrastructure, prioritise simultaneous fire events, predict fire spread based on humidity levels, vegetation and topography, and transmit all this information directly to emergency responders so they can coordinate their operations more effectively.
Over the coming months, Greece will launch seven additional multispectral satellites to further strengthen wildfire monitoring, while already benefiting from other satellites operated by OroraTech.
This makes Greece the first country in the world to integrate a dedicated satellite constellation into its national wildfire response system. Until only a few years ago, Greece’s firefighting strategy relied on lookout towers, fire patrols in high-risk forests and fire engines stationed at strategic locations. It was an outdated system that could not provide comprehensive territorial coverage and required more time to respond once a fire had already started. The technological transformation also includes the rapid deployment of drones. There were 40 drones two years ago, 80 last year, and more than 100 this year.
“Drones have revolutionised firefighting operations because, until now, fires were spotted by lookouts positioned eight or ten metres above the ground. Now drones fly at 120 metres, have zoom capabilities far beyond binoculars, and can stream live video simultaneously to 10 or 15 people involved in decision-making,” said firefighter Alexandros Papaioannou.
Greece’s technological revolution is not only improving wildfire suppression but also helping authorities identify those responsible for starting fires. The number of arrests has doubled in two years, while the total value of fines has increased by more than fourfold. It is a system in which deterrence, emergency response and prediction work hand in hand. The European Union plans to increase funding for Greece to further strengthen these technologies and help export them to other European countries facing growing wildfire risks and the consequences of climate change—including Italy.
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