Croatia's AI-Powered Wildfire Camera Network — Doubling Coverage Under the EU Cohesion Programme

Croatia's Ministry of Environmental Protection and Green Transition operates a nationwide network of fixed cameras that uses artificial intelligence combined with meteorological data to detect smoke and flame signatures around the clock, in both daytime and night-time conditions. In August 2026 the ministry announced the network's expansion from 50 to 75 cameras, adding 25 new monitoring points concentrated in protected areas such as national and nature parks, where wildfire risk is judged highest.

The system feeds imagery and detection alerts directly to county-level fire monitoring centres, aiming to compress the time between ignition and first response. The expansion is financed through Croatia's Competitiveness and Cohesion Programme 2021–2027, part of the country's wider climate-adaptation strategy, reflecting official concern that extreme heat and drought are making wildfires more frequent and severe.

Public reporting to date describes deployment scale and funding but has not published detection accuracy, false-positive rates, or fire-outcome statistics for the expanded network, so its measured impact on suppression speed or area burned is not yet independently verifiable.

Read the full analysis: https://www.croatiaweek.com/croatia-expands-ai-fire-detection-system/