Proposing New Tech for Wildfires

Romita Biswas - 09/10/2023

Ideation:

Hi, it's deltaQ! Let’s talk about wildfires. We know that wildfires have just been getting worse. And the sheer amount of damage they’re causing is insane. So we have to ask if there’s something we can do.

We want to brainstorm what role technology could play in making wildfires less deadly. We decided to break it down this way - we need solutions to:

Mitigate wildfires
Identify and track wildfires
Predict wildfire spread
Communicate

At DeltaQ we're thinking about the level of effort and urgency for each problem solution space. What is the engineering cost, the economic cost, and how many people have to be involved?

Mitigation is incredibly broad - where do we start? Here’s some ideas we had:

Drones spraying the new fire preventing gel from Stanford
Introducing a fire resistant grass species
Electrifying homes in fire prone areas

The next angle of attack: identifying + tracking wildfires. We had some ideas here too:

Drones identifying hotspots
Advanced satellite tech
IoT devices in the wild

Out of all the ideas, advanced satellite tech is the most expensive. There’s a cool company, Muon Space, who launched a satellite this year specifically to monitor climate change. But this solution doesn't currently work for wildfires since they need to be detected asap. Although satellites are cool they have an orbiting period, when a fire prone area isn’t monitored. For something so urgent we need a local solution like drones identifying hotspots.

[Identifying california fires through satellite imagery MODIS]

Another solution area is around predicting wildfire spread:

Wildfire Simulation through Chaos Theory
Deep Generative Wildfire Prediction Models
Modeling Wind and Air Pressure of a Wildfire

These are all similar ideas because they’re modeling and simulation based. However, it’s hard to rely on data because things are quickly changing in our climate.

Our cofounder Romita made a tool to simulate wildfire spread through chaos theory. What’s cool about this is that you only need to know the initial conditions of the wildfire start: Wildfire Simulation through Fuzzy Cellular Automata. This means accuracy without much data, a big advantage for a climate model.

[Sneak Peak of our Wildfire Tool: Simulating Wildfires through Fuzzy Cellular Automata - California Mosquito Fires 2022 ]

Finally, communication. Communication should allow for timely evacuations and better fire fighting. All these previous solutions don’t really matter if we can’t save lives. We say screw the old alarm system:

Phones
Deployable Air Borne Alarms
Home Warning Systems

Since communication is the most urgent piece here, all the above are essential. We should install home warning systems, deploy air borne alarms in an area that has a wildfire, and sound the alarm on everyone’s phones.

These were some of our thoughts on the wildfire issues we face. But we want to hear you guys break down this issue and find solutions you think would work.