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SACRAMENTO — State fire officials and wildfire researchers have more technology at their disposal than ever. Fresh off a record-breaking year of the largest, deadliest and most destructive wildfires in California history, they joined with tech companies and others at a first-of-its-kind summit Wednesday to try and figure out how to use all that technology to help forecast, detect and prevent wildfires and improve life-saving communications with first responders and the public.
The two-day wildfire technology summit drew about 650 lawmakers, policymakers, scientists, fire officials, tech experts and representatives from utility companies to Sacramento State University on Wednesday to exchange ideas and to hear from climate scientists and academics. What they heard was that preparing for the future also requires understanding the causes of today’s wildfires — which have killed 138 people in the state over the past two years — and learning about the past.
“California is a harbinger of what’s to come,” said Ed Struzik, author of “Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future” and a fellow at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queens University in Canada.
He reminded the summit about some of the important effects of wildfires: changes in forests, degradation of water quality, impact on fish populations, possible reduction in visits to national parks, poor air quality.
“The magnitude, scale and scope of wildfires in the West is unreplicated,” said Jeff Johnson, chief executive of the Western Fire Chiefs Association. “The solutions will come from the West,” he added, and identified California as the leader of that push.
Technology can help in different ways.
Mary Glackin, vice president of Science and Forecast Operations at IBM, was on a panel with some meteorologists and an official from the U.S. Forest Service about using technology — including machine learning and artificial intelligence — for wildfire forecasting. IBM, which already is in the business of predicting the impact of storms as the parent of the Weather Co., is one of the companies studying detection and prediction of wildfires.
Other companies big and small also were present to show off their technology. Descartes Labs, a venture-backed startup spun off from Los Alamos National Laboratory, is using data from satellites and machine learning to detect and track wildfires. Forest Technology Systems (FTS), a Canadian company that’s been around for almost four decades, brought along one of its fixed remote automated weather stations, which detect soil moisture, wind speed and more, and are being used in remote locations by forest management agencies in the United States and Canada.
“Our high-tech tools have paid off by providing insights and situational awareness,” said Caroline Winn, chief operating officer of San Diego Gas & Electric, who said the data the tools — including mountaintop cameras and a fire potential index — collect help the utility make day-to-day decisions, including when to turn off power when there’s high fire danger.
Winn was on a panel with others from San Diego who shared lessons from the first mega fires in the state that happened in that region during the mid-2000s and the changes that have been adopted since then.
All the panelists said that improving communication is critical. Residents need to be alerted about dangers and evacuations, and firefighters need access to real-time data to help them do their jobs.
Michael Picker, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, which hosted the summit, said only 6 percent of the state’s residents rely on landline phones. A majority of Californians use only their mobile phones, but cell towers are susceptible to power outages or fires.
“Those fail,” Picker said.
Fellow panelist Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, agreed, saying that the state needs reliable, resilient cellphone networks.
Matt Jolly, a research ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service in Montana, mentioned a different aspect of the importance of communication. He said the U.S. Forest Service has “real (tech) tools that have real utility,” including producing fire forecasts for California and other states. What’s key, in a vast nation such as the United States, he said: “How do you put this in the hands of the right people so we can change behavior?”
For example, PG&E warned residents in Butte County that power could be cut off because of high winds and low humidity forecast for the day the deadly Camp Fire erupted on Nov. 8, 2018, but opted not to interrupt power. The town of Paradise was nearly destroyed, and 85 people died.
Thursday, the summit will explore topics including risks posed by power lines and what utilities can do to identify problems and solutions.
Besides the CPUC, IBM, the California Office of Emergency Services, Sacramento State University and UC San Diego co-hosted the Widlfire Technology Innovation Summit.
