Landmine detecting bees create a buzz . Croatian honeybees being trained to sniff out land mines and save lives.

ORIGINAL: Tiramisu (Toolbox Implementation for Removal of Anti-Personal Mines, Submunitions and Uxo)

Sugar-craving honeybees could help Europe avoid deadly landmine explosions. Researchers in Croatia have been developing a unique method of finding leftover mines from Croatia's war in the 1990s. According to bee behavior expert, Professor Nikola Kezic, the bees have a perfect sense of smell that can even detect the odor of explosives, and they are being trained to identify TNT.

TIRAMISU

Project Overview




Anti-personnel landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXOs) represent an important obstacle in the transition from crisis to peace for war affected countries. They threaten post-conflict development and welfare.

The objective of the TIRAMISU project is to provide the Mine Action community with a toolbox to assist in addressing the many issues related to Humanitarian Demining and thus promoting peace, national and regional security, conflict prevention, social and economic rehabilitation and post-conflict reconstruction.

The tools in development are divided in three main categories:

1. Demining planning tools, which will help locating the threats and define the contaminated areas.
2. Detection and disposal tools, which will physically neutralise mines and UXOs and improve operators’ safety.
3. Training and Mine Risk education tools.

These tools will be tested and validated in mine-affected countries and will also benefit from state-of-the-art technologies (robots, UAV...).