Fighting wildfires the smart way: with sensors, AI and drones

The past few years have seen record wildfires in California, Europe and Australia, with conflagrations worsened by hot, dry conditions caused by climate change. That makes fighting such fires all the more costly – financially and in terms of firefighters’ lives.

Even the UK faces more frequent and more intense wildfires. The best solution is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to rein in temperatures, but technologies such as drones, AI and sensors are also lending a helping hand to predict, track and fight fires.

There’s a host of ways firefighters already use such technology. UK company FireAngel uses AI to predict incidents (pcpro.link/335angel) for at-risk people, such as dementia sufferers, while US government agency NIST developed AI to predict flashovers (pcpro.link/335NIST). This is the phenomenon when items in a room ignite all at once, only limited by the amount of available oxygen.

San Francisco startup Qwake Technologies (qwake.tech) has developed a heads-up display using augmented reality in helmets to help firefighters see their way through a fire, while 3M’s Scott Sight embeds thermal imaging into helmets.

Then there’s Dubai. This is often cited as the centre of future tech, but the ideas that