Welcome to Depwisen

About the Project

Depwisen falls under the theme of Climate Change identified in the Pak-UK Innovative and Collaborative Research Grant (ICRG) call and is funded by British Council and Higher Education Commission Pakistan. Deforestation causes immeasurable environmental damage, releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and driving thousands of species of life to extinction each year. It also inflicts long-term economic losses due to limited natural resources, soil erosion, increased flooding, drought and a domino of unfavorable effects in terms of ecosystem and public health.

Pakistan is identified as having one of the fastest deforestation rates and has one of the lowest forests covers in the world (less than 3% compared to Asian countries like India’s 20% and Bhutan’s 70%). Urgent countermeasures are necessary to avoid a fast-looming calamity. Billion Tree Tsunami and Clean Green Pakistan are the two major initiatives the Government of Pakistan took to slow down deforestation in Pakistan.

We aim to design a wireless sensor network (WSN) based solution to combat deforestation in Pakistan. Balochistan province, where Juniper and Pine Nut forests, which have an economic share of 2-4% towards the provincial GDP through the timber and dry fruit industry, are officially declared under threat. This work falls under the theme of Climate Change identified in the Pak-UK Innovative and Collaborative Research Grant (ICRG) call as a key area.

The proposed work will be low-cost, autonomous, real-time monitoring and response system. It would be a true implementation of modern technologies. This system will ensure continuous monitoring of the forests and timely response to counter an unauthorized human activity, fire, and tree health degradation.

The proposed project will bring a collaboration of engineers and scientists from leading institutions of Pakistan and the United Kingdom. The consortium has representation from Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences (BUITEMS), NED University of Engineering and Technology (NED), Lahore College for Women University (LCWU), University of Glasgow UK (UofG), and Middlesex University UK (MDX). Forest Department Balochistan, SUPARCO, and CENSIS UK will give their partnership to all phases of the project.