What if several groups of innovators tackled a growing problem and could stop a wildfire with answers straight out of science fiction? That’s what the XPrize Wildfire competition asked for and almost received.
“Almost” because none of the finalists managed to take home the Grand Prize in either track (see below).
Writing for Ars Technica, Jeremy Hsu, under the headline, “XPRIZE Wildfire winners spotted fires within 10 min—but couldn’t stop them.” A subheading added, “$11M competition showed wildfire detection is still easier than stopping fires.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTlgRugUNCo
The XPrize Foundation broke the problem into two tracks. Track A: Space-based Wildfire Detection and Intelligence, awarded prizes for the most promising and “meaningful advances in space-based wildfire detection and intelligence.” Track B:Autonomous Wildfire Response, awarded three teams for their ability to, “to autonomously detect and completely suppress a high-risk fire within 10 minutes of ignition across 1,000 km² of challenging terrain, without disturbing nearby decoy fires.”
Track A Winners
- First Place – System Integration Awardee, $500,000: SIRIUS Wildfire Alliance
SIRIUS Wildfire Alliance demonstrated comprehensive end-to-end and system integration methodology, integrating synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and optical data to support fire characterization and spread modeling. - Second Place – Methodological Innovation Awardee, $250,000: Team Snuffed
Team Snuffed developed a probabilistic data-fusion framework designed to provide transparent, auditable and uncertainty-aware wildfire detection, with strong firefighter-facing usability. - Special Recognition, Commercial Viability, $100,000: MyRadar
As a commercially mature team, MyRadar utilized upstream satellite acquisition and demonstrated spatial precision. - Special Recognition, Operational Deliverable, $100,000: DeepFire
DeepFire demonstrated an operational fire-spread-alert capability designed to support wildfire detection and intelligence. - Special Recognition, Innovative Algorithm Application, $100,000: Mayday.AI
Mayday.AI applied an algorithm originally developed for volcanic-ash detection to identify wildfire smoke plumes through cloud cover.
-
Track B Winners
- First Place Awardee, $1.2 Million: Anduril Industries Anduril’s modular Lattice software platform provided an integrated detection-to-suppression integrated pathway for unifying cameras, sensors and drones.
- Second Place Awardee, $800,000: Dryad Networks Dryad’s Silvanet, a 170-sensor persistent field network, combined with their Silvaguard drones, demonstrated end-to-end autonomy.
- Third Place Awardee, $500,000: AURA Foresight AURA successfully demonstrated autonomous and persistent detection, meeting the critical 10-minute detection gate.
Why This is Important
Wildfires represent an existential threat. Ask the survivors of Paradise, California’s Camp Fire. That conflagration “caused 85 fatalities, displaced more than 50,000 people and destroyed over 18,000 structures, and caused an estimated $16.5 billion in damage.” Other blazes in Oregon and last year in Los Angeles, destroyed small towns and entire urban neighborhoods.
According to the California Air Resources Board, “Fires release massive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, contributing to a feedback loop that accelerates global climate change.”
Dr. Brien Seeley, founder of the Sustainable Aviation Foundation, writes, “Wildfires destroy ecosystems, entire towns, people’s homes and businesses. Their flames and smoke can kill as many as 339,000 people annually across the globe. But the biggest reason we must end wildfires is because of their effect on the climate crisis. Calculations show that, due to the cumulative effects of global wildfires, an astonishing 56.6 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 per year can be added to our planet’s atmosphere. That 56.6 GtCO2 dwarfs the roughly 38 GtCO2 per year emitted by the entire global use of fossil fuels. How could this be?”
His paper, “Why We Must End Wildfires,” answers that question and provides solutions, including the Foundations researched finding that, “[The] Sustainable Aviation Foundation has projected that a global program of Autonomous Aerial Firefighting (AAF) could feasibly and affordably end global wildfires.”
All of the 300 original entrants and others not part of the competition have a set of knowledge and skills. The combined force of all the dedicated minds involved could review the best efforts so far and create a more successful air drop scenario. The future depends on such thinking.
Sustainable Skies will continue with this important topic.