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Imagine a wastebasket smoldering from a carelessly discarded cigarette. If someone is in the same room, it can be easily detected and quickly extinguished. But what if there is no one in the room to notice the fire? What if that fire leads to the whole house going up in flames? The fire department will come, but by then the house may be totally destroyed. Forest fires follow a similar trajectory. Small fires can smolder for hours or even days. They are easy to put out at that stage, but once they become a major conflagration, they can destroy thousands or even hundreds of thousands of acres, along with every building that stands in their path.
Forest fires have become much more prevalent in the last few years as the climate gets hotter and drier in many areas. In addition to the destruction of homes and businesses, they also have a knock on effect that is under-reported. As the trees burn, they release the carbon dioxide stored in them back into the atmosphere, which leads to more global heating and more forest fires. According to a study published in the journal Nature, wildfires in Canada last year released about 640 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
It’s a vicious circle that can lead to massive disruptions in the carefully curated lives of millions of people. Wildfires today burn 23,000 more square miles of forests than they did in 2001. Hundreds lose their lives in those fires while almost a half million people have their homes destroyed. Those fires releases dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere that can increase the chances of disease and death for people hundreds or even thousands of miles away. A study published in October estimated 10,000 more people died each year in the 2010s than in the 1960s as a result of wildfire smoke.
Using Sensors To Detect Forest Fires
Traditionally, the way to detect forest fires has been to post human observers high up in tall towers where they can spot the telltale smoke from the fires and sound the alarm. The problem is, by the time the fire is big enough for the smoke to appear above the tree line, the fire may be too big to contain. Carsten Brinkschulte is the CEO of Dryad, a German startup whose mission is to use internet of things technology to sniff out — literally — those small fires so they can be extinguished quickly and easily before they can become forest fires. The sensors are mounted throughout a forest and are capable of detecting smoke long before most humans ever could.
Brinkschulte told Bloomberg recently that the sensors the company has developed for its Silvanet fire early warning system are an electronic nose. “If you get to a wildfire when it’s tiny, you have a lot more options that you can do than if you detect it when it’s two, three, five hectares in size,” he says. “It’s very hard to contain at that point.” He said he wanted to create a system that senses fires before they escalate with “a scalable, sustainable business model.” Each of Dryad’s Silvanet sensors is equipped with a metal oxide semiconductor layer that reacts with gases in the air. When hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and other gases are present — as they are in the early stages of a fire — they alter the electrical resistance of the sensors and create a specific digital “fingerprint.” Artificial intelligence then analyzes the gas composition in real time. The system allows users to geolocate the origin of a fire down to a 320 foot radius from a device.
Dryad has shipped more than 20,000 of its Silvanet sensors to customers worldwide. They cost less than $100 apiece and customers pay a service fee for access to Dryad’s cloud based platform. The company says it has more than 100 customers in 20 countries, with most of them being local governments and municipalities. In the US, California’s state fire prevention agency has been testing 400 of Dryad’s sensors in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest, about 160 miles north of San Francisco.
Dryad hopes to move beyond detection to actual firefighting using autonomous drones that respond to fires. “We are in a unique position where we detect fires early, so the drones have a chance of extinguishing them,” Brinkschulte said. The US Department of Homeland Security has deployed sensors made by N5, a startup in Rockville, Maryland. Called N5SHIELD, the sensors are now situated across the Hawaiian island of Maui, which suffered a catastrophic fire last year.
Other Fire Detection Technology
SmokeD, a startup based in Poland, has been testing a device that takes pictures every few seconds, then uses AI to simultaneously compare each photo as part of a continuous monitoring system. The cameras are intended to provide a way to detect fires in areas where IoT devices like those provided by Dryad cannot function effectively. Cameras, however, require substantial infrastructure such as elevated mounting points and continuous power sources, which limits their scalability, particularly in remote areas.
New satellite technology will make orbiting platforms better able to detect fires in hard to reach locations. Geostationary satellites are too far away from the Earth to capture images with enough resolution to spot small fires. Low earth orbit satellites allow for high resolution imagery, but dvo not scan the same spot of the Earth frequently enough. What’s needed is a large number of satellites that can acquire images of the same location down to a level that’s useful, Christopher Van Arsdale, the head of climate and energy at Google Research tells Bloomberg.
In September, his team announced FireSat, a purpose built fleet of satellites designed to detect small scale fires on a global scale. Groups including Google.org and the Moore Foundation are funding a non-profit called Earth Fire Alliance in order to launch them. By 2028, FireSat says it plans to have 52 satellites in place, each with thermal infrared sensors that can identify potential fires in almost any weather conditions. The high resolution imagery of the entire planet will refresh every 20 minutes, and the system will be able to capture a fire about as small as a classroom anywhere within this time period, the company says. The first satellite is scheduled to be launched early next year.
Another German startup called OroraTech is working on a similar system. The company has already launched two satellites says Thomas Grübler, OroraTech’s chief strategy officer and co-founder. The goal is to launch 98 more satellites before 2028. When all 100 satellites are in place, the company says it will be able to detect a 13 by 13 foot fire globally within 30 minutes or less.
Detection Vs Prevention
Michael Wara, director of the climate and energy policy program at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, warns against focusing too much on fire detection technologies. While early and accurate detection can help contain certain fires. “No amount of rapid detection is going to change tactics or outcome on some fires,” he says. If we’re going to have these satellite technologies and cameras and sensors, we need to also invest in controlled burns. “The risk is that we focus too much on detection but we must not overlook mitigation and prevention,” he told Bloomberg. In other words, detecting fires is important but fire prevention measure are important too. There are still some things that AI, sensors, and microprocessors can’t do — yet.
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