Wildfire detection from space and firefighting drones featured among the finalists honored in the $11 million XPRIZE Wildfire competition. Although no team walked away with either of the two grand prizes, such technologies could prove helpful as the world grapples with the growing costs of worsening wildfire disasters.
The competition’s First Prize track for space-based wildfire detection challenged teams to accurately detect all fires across a large swath of Australia within 10 minutes. A second Autonomous Response Prize track challenged teams to autonomously detect and put out a high-risk fire located somewhere within rural Alaska while ignoring decoy fires—all within 10 minutes of the fire igniting.
“We want to be able to prepare and provide tools for firefighters to really allow them to do the best job,” Andrea Santy, program director of XPRIZE Wildfire, told Ars. “They're great at what they do, but it's unfair to continue to put them in harm's way when there's technology coming online that can help keep them safe, keep communities safe, and protect ecosystems.”