DENVER (National Times) \u2014 A year after the most destructive wildfire in the state\u2019s history scorched nearly 1,100 homes, Colorado lawmakers are considering joining other Western states by adopting artificial intelligence in the hopes of detecting blazes before they burn out of control.<\/p>\n
A proposal that legislators will discuss in a hearing Thursday would create a $2 million pilot program to mount cameras on mountaintops in high-risk locations. An artificial intelligence program developed by a private company would analyze the images and sounds from cameras within 10-mile (about 16-kilometre) radiuses with the aim of detecting something that could signal the start of a blaze.<\/p>\n
It is part of an ongoing effort by firefighters to use new technology to become smarter about how they prepare and better position their resources. Fire lookout towers once staffed by humans have largely been replaced by cameras in remote areas, many of them in high-definition and armed with artificial intelligence to discern a smoke plume from the morning fog.<\/p>\n
There are hundreds of such cameras scattered across California, Nevada and Oregon, and even casual viewers can remotely watch wildfires in real-time.<\/p>\n
Historic drought and recent heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West and scientists say warming weather will continue to make fires more frequent and destructive. Record-breaking storms that drenched California with more than 11 inches of rain in recent weeks and big snow dumps in other states have improved conditions in the short term, but the drought persists across most of Nevada, California and Utah, and large areas of other Western states, according to a Tuesday report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<\/p>\n
The goal of the Colorado program would be for cameras and an AI algorithm to detect a plume of smoke and alert first responders who can stomp out the blaze before it grows, said Don Coram, a former Republican Colorado state senator who first backed the idea and encouraged this year\u2019s sponsor, Rep. Cleave Simpson, a Republican and rancher.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce these fires get into cresting in the tree tops, it\u2019s going to take a lot of resources, a lot of manpower, and a lot of good luck to knock them down,\u201d Coram said.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s hearing will include testimony from an AI wildfire detection company called Pano AI. The company began working with cities, including the ski resort town of Aspen, Colorado and has expanded to cities and counties in six states. Their stations include two cameras mounted on a high vantage point, rotating at 360 degrees and connected to the company\u2019s AI software. Each station costs roughly $50,000 every year.<\/p>\n
Arvind Satyam, the chief commercial officer at Pano AI, said that the artificial intelligence uses a data set of over 300 million images that teach it what is smoke from a fire and what isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Once a camera signals that there could be a fire, the photos and information are run through the company\u2019s intelligence centre for human vetting \u2014 the algorithm could\u2019ve mistaken a tractor\u2019s dust cloud or even geyser for a smoke plume \u2014 before it\u2019s sent along to fire agencies, he said.<\/p>\n
AI has gained notoriety for breaking into a number of fields \u2014 from creating propaganda and disinformation to writing essays or cover letters about whatever the user requests.<\/p>\n
David Blankinship, the senior technology advisor for the Western Fire Chiefs Association, said fire agencies have come to rely on this type of detection technology, especially in California where the programs have been put to wider use.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt loops around in a 360 all the time and searches for pixel changes that the human eye might not detect,\u201d said Blankinship, adding that \u201canything you can do to take time out of the response to that fire saves lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Blankinship noted that \u201cthese cameras, even with AI, are only one component of the actual solution that is working.\u201d<\/p>\n
That solution includes civilians calling in fires, other equipment such as smoke sensors, aircraft that gather detailed information by flying over the burns, and even satellites providing broader information on a burn\u2019s size, Blankinship said.<\/p>\n
All those systems, including cameras fitted with AI, allow fire authorities to model a wildfire and consequently better make difficult decisions about where and when to evacuate, how many engines to dedicate to a certain fire, or if burns should be extinguished at all.
\nTo Coram, who will be attending the hearing on Thursday, the bill \u201cjust makes too much sense not to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI look around at all the rooftops that I can see, and think, \u2018My god when this catches on fire, what are we going to do?\u2019\u201d said Coram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DENVER (National Times) \u2014 A year after the most destructive wildfire in the state\u2019s history scorched nearly 1,100 homes, Colorado lawmakers are considering joining other Western states by adopting artificial intelligence in the hopes of detecting blazes before they burn out of control. A proposal that legislators will discuss in a hearing Thursday would create […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n