How tech is helping in the battle against wildfires

Image source, AFP via Getty Images Image caption, France's Gironde region has been hit by devastating wildfires this summer

The pictures are familiar, terrifying fires being tackled by firefighters and planes dropping water.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes across France, Spain and Portugal as wildfires tore through forests and countryside.

In France, four men have already lost their lives fighting the wildfires and another 150 have been injured.

But why are humans and 30-year old planes being used? Why can drones replace soldiers in Ukraine but not firefighters?

Chief sergeant Guillaume Millet, a firefighter of 24 years experience heads the Fire and Rescue Service branch of the CFDT union in the Gironde, the region worst hit by wildfires in France this summer.

He says that while the techniques for tackling fire have not changed much, technology in forest fire detection has.

"The big change, especially in my département, is that now we've got cameras assisted by artificial intelligence to watch the forest and see where fires are starting," Millet says.

"In the Gironde, cameras have replaced the human look-outs we had in watch towers in every town throughout the summer months," he says. Those lookouts were often students.

The switch has reduced false alarms, he says. "An AI-assisted camera can distinguish with almost total certainty between smoke and dust thrown up by a tractor in a field, for example."

They have an impressive range as well, detecting fires up to 20km (12 miles) away.

Image source, Getty Images Image caption, Catching fires early is essential - once established they are harder to manage

In the Gironde, the system was installed by a company called Midgard. In other parts of France, it's another French start-up called FireTracking.

"As soon as the system detects a fire, there's an alert on the fire fighters' telephones. They open the application and see what the camera is seeing with a x40 [40 times] zoom," explains FireTracking's CEO Jean-Simon Chaudier.

"Next to that real-time video there's a map with the exact location of the fire, the position of any nearby houses and a simulation of how, given the weather, the level of humidity and so on, it is expected to spread from minute to minute," he adds.

And every minute is vital. "For the past 10 days, for example, we have the feedback from a firefighter that our AI detected seven fires 15 minutes before the first phone call. If you can help a firefighter to save 15 minutes, it's the difference between a catastrophe and a fire which can be limited to two or three hectares," Chaudier says.

"After one minute you can put out a fire with a glass of water, after two you need a tank of water, after three minutes you need to send a Canadair," Chaudier says, talking about the amphibious planes that scoop up water from rivers, lakes and the sea to dump it on the flames that are the spearhead of forest fire fighting here and around the world.

Image source, FireTracking Image caption, Human look-outs have been replaced by cameras which can detect fires

FireTracking's cameras are currently surveying a million hectares, mainly in France.

The cost? In the French département of Indre-et-Loire, the company has installed 11 detection sites.

"In all €1.2m [$1.4m; £1m] was spent to cover the whole 6,000 sq km area [2,300 sq miles]," says Chaudier.

It is mainly agricultural land. Crop fires are a huge and expensive problem with some 300 a year in this département alone, Chaudier says.

AI fire detection is going to get better over the coming years. The French civil protection service has a programme called Condor, for example, which is testing solar-powered drones that carry out continuous patrols with electro-optical cameras and AI.

There are also projects with sensors placed among the trees. Spain's SenForFire, for example, which measures gases released before flames become visible.

As for drones, firefighter Guillaume Millet says they're being tested in France for sea rescue, dropping lifebuoys and survival kits, but there's no drone tech that's reached that stage yet for firefighting.

"In fact, the usefulness of technology is very limited in this area," Millet says. "It can help us with detection but it's not technology that puts out fires; you need people to pull the hoses through the forest to attack them."

Not even aircraft can replace that, he says.

"When a Canadair drops 6,000 litres of water on a wildfire it reduces its intensity but then firefighters on the ground have to finish what the Canadair started."

The French are also getting used to the sight of Dash planes that spray fire retardant (ammonium phosphate in the form of an orange powder) in front of the flames to prevent the vegetation from catching fire too quickly.

But again, that's no substitute for the brawn and water brought by troops on the ground.

Image source, AFP via Getty Images Image caption, A Canadair firefighting plane can drop 6,000 litres of water in one go

A French start-up called Daidelos is trying to raise investment for a heavy-lifting, petrol-engine drone.

If it gets off the ground, it will be able to hover over a fire, spraying it with 1.2 tonnes of water.

Companies are also developing drones that drop grenades which explode when they come in contact with extreme heat, covering the surrounding area with a chemical powder that smothers, cools and interrupts the combustion chemistry of the fire.

The hope here is that this could form an autonomous first response, so forest fire detection and drone activation can be so quick that fires can be extinguished as they're starting. It would not be able to do anything against a wildfire once it's really got going.

French researchers are also working on drones that could fly close to the flames. That wouldn't be to fight the fire exactly but to seize vital information about it; to assess the risks – smoke, sudden weather changes, collapse of burning trees or buildings - before the firefighters move in.

Technology is already helping firefighters detect fires faster and react to them more effectively. It might soon be able to make their job less dangerous. But replacing them is unlikely, according to Gironde firefighter Guillame Millet.

"It's always the firefighters on the ground, pulling the hoses, who extinguish the fires," he says. This has been the case since the creation of the first modern fire brigade in the Netherlands in the 1670s. It is not about to change soon.

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