On 29th of June 2026, MECOnet, in cooperation with National Parks of Montenegro and Nature 4.0 from Italy, installed a series of TreeTalker Sensors (TreeTalker Fire and TreeTalker Cyber) for the purposes of the ARCA (ARtificial intelligence platform to prevent Climate change natural hazArds) project (Interreg IPA Adrion).
The installation represents an important step in establishing the ARCA pilot infrastructure in Montenegro and strengthening the technological capacities for monitoring forest ecosystems and preventing climate-related natural hazards, including wildfires.
The sensors have been installed on selected trees across in cooperation with the representatives of Lovćen National Park. The locations were selected to enable distributed monitoring of different forest conditions and to support the collection of environmental and tree-related data from the protected area.
The installed sensor network is designed to collect information on tree and forest health, including parameters such as air temperature and humidity, stem water conditions, sap flow, tree growth, vegetation indicators and tree stability. The system also supports the monitoring of parameters relevant to fire-risk assessment and early fire detection, including particulate matter and gas concentrations, foliage temperature and indications of flame presence.
Within the ARCA project, the monitoring network will be transmitted remotely for further processing and analysis, which will be monitored by MECOnet and a network of partners headed by The Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) with its seat in Lecce, Italy. The collected data will contribute to the development and testing of artificial intelligence and machine-learning models for forest monitoring, natural-hazard prediction and climate-adaptation planning.
The deployment in Lovćen National Park will provide valuable information on local forest conditions and create a technological basis for continuous monitoring, analysis of fire-risk indicators and future testing of the ARCA Decision Support System.
Through this activity, MECOnet and Lovćen National Park are contributing to the development of innovative approaches to forest protection and to the wider cross-border cooperation promoted through the Interreg IPA ADRION Programme.
The next phase will focus on verifying sensor data, monitoring the quality of the collected data and integrating the information into the common ARCA data-processing and artificial-intelligence infrastructure.
The ARCA project is co-financed through the Interreg VI-B IPA Adriatic-Ionian Cooperation Programme.