#20 Wildfires
#20 Wildfires
Using climate tech to prevent them, detect them and stop them
Read time: 3 minutes
In this week’s issue you will learn about one of the most destructive forces of nature and the different ways to deal with it: Wildfires
“Climate change has already led to an increase in wildfire season length, wildfire frequency, and burned area“ - United States Environmental Protection Agency
Top News 🗞️
VC Money: A new VC fund has raised $35 million to invest in startups dealing with wildfires.
Competition: This week PG&E, XPRIZE, and several Government institutions have launched a four-year, $11 million competition to develop solutions against wildfires.
Let’s dive in 🧠
Wildfires are any type of uncontrolled fire that is spreading across an ecosystem.
They can start both in a natural way (lightning strike) or due to human activity (cigarettes, campfires, etc.). Sadly only about 4% of them start naturally, the rest are caused by humans either by accident or on purpose.
Regardless of the cause, we see the number of wildfires has been growing drastically in the last few decades. (The picture shows the US only)
One of the main reasons of this increase is climate change.
With temperatures increasing every year, the evaporation rates go up, removing moisture from plants, the soil, and the dead branches and leafs.
This means that if a fire starts it can spread very quickly.
On top of that there’s evidence that climate change is affecting the jet stream and moving rain clouds from the areas that need them most.
It’s also decreasing the amount of snow that keeps the forests green for a longer period of time.
Overall climate change is making the “wildfire season” last longer, be more unpredictable and more extreme.
So what can we do?
Prevention:
Education: Increase awareness about the ways to prevent fires and the impact they have to limit the fires caused by accident.
Maintenance: Properly manage forests, keep them healthy and get rid of dry dead branches. Make them less prone to catching on fire.
Firewalls: Clear strips of forest or spray liquids that will keep fires from spreading.
And of course, on top of that, there’s stopping climate change. The more we can limit the global temperature increase the more we will prevent fires from happening.
Detection:
The earlier a fire is detected the easier it is to put if off. In order to quickly detect fires in remote areas we can use several methods.
There’s high definition near-real-time satellite images, smoke and humidity sensors placed in the forests, cameras places in strategic fixed spots or even in drones.
Combining these ultra-early fire detection methods, allows firefighters to deal with wildfires as soon as possible.
Extinction:
Once the fire has started it is key to continuously monitor its evolution with as many types of cameras and sensors as possible.
On top of that we can use special liquids to put off the fire more effectively than with water.
Citizen cooperation and private-public partnerships are needed to effectively deal with wildfires.
Cons
Cooperation: The land wildfires burn often belongs to or falls under the responsibility of different people. This makes it more difficult to agree on how to deal with fires.
Cost: Some of the solutions mentioned are not very cheap and they require to be deployed at a large scale, thus increasing the cost. This affects poor regions the most.
Top Companies 💰
Ecofire: They make a 100% organic liquid that can be used both to put off a fire or to keep it from burning a certain area and thus acting as a firewall. 1 litre of Ecofire is the equivalent of 50 litres of water.
Orora Technologies: They use thermal-infrared sensing nanosatellites to monitor over 160 million hectares of forest.
Dryad Networks: They use a large-scale IOT network to provide ultra-early fire detection as well as health & growth monitoring solutions for forests.
Also check out Edgybees, Pano, and Descartes Labs which are taking different approaches to detecting fires.
❗Extreme knowledge area❗
Interactive map: A very cool way to see wildfire alerts across the world.
Wildfire reports: Detailed and visual reports about wildfires in the US by month since 1998. Done by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
Ecofire: Watch this video if you want to be amazed by the performance of the Ecofire liquid in different situations.
That’s it for today, 1 climate tech topic in under 5 minutes.
Next up… Wetlands! 🤯
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