Report: Technology can aid wildfire response that’s ‘stuck in the last century’

With each passing season, the growing threat of wildfire and its impact on life safety, property, and the economy is underscored by dramatic fire events that ecologically alter entire regions, uproot communities and cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Last year, 68,988 wildfires burned 7.6 million acres of American land. And as of the end of February, about 3,500 wildfires have already scorched more than 28,000 acres this year.

Mitigating the impact of wildfire has emerged as a primary priority for western and southern administrators at all levels of government—from federal agencies to local, Tribal and county officials. In this effort, technology can play an important role. A new report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a council charged by each administration with a broad mandate to advise the president on science and technology, recommends modernizing wildland firefighting. 

Recommendations include adopting “advanced technologies that will improve situational awareness on the scene of active fires,” addressing communication shortfalls through interoperable communication tech, expanding satellite research, utilizing drone technology, and establishing a joint agency “to spur development and deployment of wildland firefighting science and technology,” according to an explainer from the White House.

Intra-agency and cross-sector collaboration—including private organizations, commercial industry, state and local governments, and defense technology providers—is a fundamental tenet outlined by the council.

“This could be a rallying call,” said Anthony Robbins, NVIDIA’s federal division vice president. “In this government space, we always look for senior leaders, councils and advisors, and subject matter experts to provide direction and focus.”

The focus by the council on technology is notable because it represents a shift toward preventing wildfire through management decisions grounded in data and input from first responders. The recommendations were developed after extensive engagement “with dozens of wildland firefighters, from frontline hand crews and smokejumpers to incident commanders and resource allocators,” according to a letter written to President Joe Biden by the council. “Their perspectives have been complemented by discussions with subject matter experts throughout the federal government, the private sector, and academia. Based on this outreach, we see exciting new opportunities to make the job of wildland firefighting safer and more effective.”

The letter compares the needs of wildland firefighters to those of soldiers fighting in war, and recommends the creation of a new joint executive office with Cabinet-delegated authority to lead a new science and technology wildfire strategy. The report notes that “critical aspects of wildfire response” are currently “stuck—technologically and organizationally—in the last century.”

To that end, technology like automated drones could save money and manpower by taking over for manned flights, which have traditionally been used to spot incipient and remote wildfires from above, Robbins said.

“I think there’s a lot of work around sensors—the department of defense has a whole business built around sensor and signal processing,” Robbins continued, noting he expects to see these kinds of innovations take root in the fire service in the next three to five years. “It makes you wonder about the possibility of instruments—more advanced instrumentation helps us in the area of predictive analysis.”

In this regard, defense contractors that have focused on the development of sensor technology for decades could play a key role.

Adding more sensors and instruments to high-risk areas of forest, “from which data could be gathered,” would be hugely beneficial to fire officials, he continued. And from the data that’s collected, “advanced modeling could be created, and from that, perhaps, more predictive and better analysis could be done. That predictive analysis leads us to mitigation steps of preventing the wildfire before it starts.”

Digital twins—real-world environments replicated in the virtual world—could then be created from the data. This technology already exists. In 2021, Nvidia launched an artificial intelligence (AI) simulation lab in Silicon Valley dedicated to predicting and responding to wildfires in collaboration with Lockheed Martin, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention & Control. The simulation lab lets fire officials map and study real-world wildfire behavior, in real time, in a virtual space. The tech company will talk about the lab at its annual GPU Technology Conference later this month.

“If you create more and more models in this virtual world, you could run more and more simulations, and that would also help in the predictive environment,” Robbins said. “We’re really on the front end. We’re only beginning the advanced technology adoption that we might be able to bring to this community.”