AI-boosted smoke-sniffing wildfire sensors approved for Santa Clara County

With California still reeling after selected of its worst wildfires on record ravaged Los Angeles earlier this year Santa Clara County officers this week approved artificial-intelligence-equipped smoke-sniffing sensors to bolster the region s early detection capabilities just as fire season gets underway In approving the sensors Santa Clara County follows Oakland which invoked the city s deadly firestorm in deploying of the devices in a pilot project Palo Alto which has installed a dozen Woodside with San Jose Water which has deployed mostly in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Stanford University which has installed of them in grassland and wooded areas on its property west of the campus We all know that setting change is driving more frequent and severe wildfires throughout California board of supervisors president Otto Lee disclosed adding that if the devices enable a quicker response to even a small number of fires then it is absolutely worth the resources Four out of five of California s most-destructive wildfires and nine of the largest have occurred since according to Cal Fire Bay Area fires feature prominently on the lists of devastating blazes in fresh years including the Tunnel Fire in the Oakland Hills the SCU Lightning Complex fires in Santa Clara Alameda Contra Costa Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties the CZU Lightning Complex fires in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties the LNU Lightning Complex fires in Napa Solano Sonoma Yolo Lake and Colusa counties the Tubbs Fire in Napa and Sonoma counties the Glass Fire in Napa and Sonoma counties and the Nuns Fire in Sonoma County In a document on the sensor project Santa Clara County staff highlighted the SCU and CZU fires which each destroyed specific buildings Lee in proposed installing fire-detection sensors in the county and county staff worked with other local agents including several that have already installed sensors to evaluate the costs and feasibility of deploying them in wildland-urban interface areas of the county Areas in the east and south parts of the county will see the first installations the county disclosed in a news release Final cost has yet to be determined but a county statement pegged the price of purchasing and deploying of the sensors and paying for their operation for one to two years at to Seth Schalet CEO of the Santa Clara County FireSafe Council which buys and resells the sensors and works with local functionaries to deploy them believes the catastrophic Los Angeles fires early this year accelerated representatives decision-making Los Angeles hasn t receded yet in what it s done to people s fear of wildfire Schalet revealed Everybody now has wildfire on their mind Each sensor costs about to with pricing dependent on whether a wind meter is included and also on the level of tariffs on Chinese-made components a little less than per sensor under current import taxes Schalet mentioned The devices which can sniff out smoke from up to four miles will be installed in parks on open-space district land and ostensibly on specific private properties Schalet disclosed They ll go up on fences and utility poles where practical and elsewhere on special posts Schalet declared In other parts of the country the sensors have alerted fire departments to previously undetected wildfires and the devices have also withstood flames although it is yet to be seen whether they would survive an intense firestorm Schalet declared The devices will provide another real-time method of fire detection beyond the structure of ALERTCalifornia cameras dozens of which are scattered around the Bay Area The sensors should be in place by year s end Schalet reported though he hopes to see installation completed before October Made in the U S by Maryland company N the solar-powered devices detect gases and particulates that smoke produces Artificial intelligence machine learning utility analyzes the detections to determine the likelihood that a wildfire is present When a workable fire is identified a device transmits a warning to local fire leadership using whatever cell amenity has the strongest signal If the chemical signatures of fire are strong enough to cross a threshold the message to administration is an alert denoting a higher priority for response If cell amenity is unavailable as can occur when fires damage infrastructure a backup Starlink satellite link is used Schalet revealed Supervisor Margaret Abe-Koga whose district in the west of the county includes various forested residential areas with narrow winding roads commented every minute counts in responding to wildfire ignitions Identifying fires as soon as attainable can mean the difference between getting out or being trapped in specific of these communities Abe-Koga disclosed Related Articles Crews halt fast-moving wildfire near Livermore Tracy Trump plans to merge wildland firefighting efforts into one agency but ex-officials warn of chaos Jennifer Garner s daughter blasts the wealthy after L A fires Map Moving across Fire in Southern California East Bay firefighters respond to vegetation fire Cody Hill associate director of resilience and crisis response for Stanford noted that in December a major wildfire threatened the Pepperdine University campus in southern California Anybody I think in higher development that has wildlands around the campus was paying attention to that Hill reported He added that typically during windy low-humidity fire weather in the Stanford area wind blows toward the west reducing the chances of a fire spreading from the hills down into the campus This project was about identifying innovative machinery in the wildfire-resilience space Hill declared Stanford wants to be used as a living laboratory Stanford s sensors have shown their sensitivity by detecting smoke from road flares set out near a traffic accident Hill announced Having these sensors that are monitoring it s reassuring knowing that tool s out there Hill noted