Researchers and forest managers are turning to artificial intelligence in the hope it can help them predict the risk of catastrophic wildfires as climate change continues to rewrite the rule book.
It91裸聊视频檚 been the subject of more than 150 recent academic studies, said Mike Flannigan, director of the Western Partnership for Wildland Fire Science at the University of Alberta.
91裸聊视频淚t is definitely front and centre in terms of the research agendas in terms of wildland fire and will continue to be for the next years,91裸聊视频� he said.
One insurance company says it has already developed an artificial intelligence program that can assess fire risk well in advance.
Fires are fought before they start, by getting equipment and crews to the right place to fight them early. Once well and truly ablaze, they91裸聊视频檙e tough to stop.
91裸聊视频淥nce the fire gets to be a crown fire and it91裸聊视频檚 two football fields or larger, it91裸聊视频檚 nearly impossible to put it out until the weather changes,91裸聊视频� Flannigan said. 91裸聊视频淵ou91裸聊视频檙e spitting on a campfire.91裸聊视频�
The occurrence and severity of wildfires are hard to foresee, said Balz Grollimund of insurance giant Swiss Re. Droughts or forest conditions can be easily considered, but ignition depends on near-random events such as lightning strikes or the presence of roads.
Risk factors such as vegetation type also vary from place to place.
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91裸聊视频淎ll these things are very tricky with wildfires,91裸聊视频� Grollimund said. 91裸聊视频淲e91裸聊视频檙e trying to anticipate where wildfires will occur.91裸聊视频�
Artificial intelligence is well-suited to find order in a chaotic mass of data, he said.
91裸聊视频淵ou start with your observations. What have you seen in the past decades in terms of where wildfires have occurred and how big they got? And you look for correlations with any factor that might have any impact.
91裸聊视频淭he question is which data really does have any correlation. That91裸聊视频檚 where the AI comes in play. It automatically figures those correlations out.91裸聊视频�
Grollimund said he91裸聊视频檚 helped develop an artificial intelligence program that can predict fire risk as far as six months out.
He tested the program by feeding data from November 2015 from across Canada. Working with scientists and computers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he determined where the highest risk for fires would be in the spring of 2016.
91裸聊视频淚t gives you a seasonal prediction for points on the map in terms of how likely it is to get a small fire or a large fire,91裸聊视频� he said. 91裸聊视频淚t91裸聊视频檚 a pretty basic output.91裸聊视频�
The vast majority of fires that did occur in April and May of that year happened in the high-risk zones identified by Grollimund91裸聊视频檚 program.
Flannigan is working on his own artificial intelligence application.
91裸聊视频淧icking up the patterns where fire growth and fire starts will be significant is where we91裸聊视频檙e focusing on to see if we can beat traditional methods,91裸聊视频� he said.
91裸聊视频淚t looks like we91裸聊视频檙e showing some promise, but I91裸聊视频檓 very cautious. It will be a long time before it goes into fire management operations.91裸聊视频�
Artificial intelligence will have stiff competition from Canada91裸聊视频檚 current methods, which Flannigan said work well and are copied globally.
Both men agree that those methods depend on the future being much like the past. Climate change threatens that assumption.
91裸聊视频淲ith climate change, we91裸聊视频檙e seeing conditions and situations that have no real analogue in the recent past,91裸聊视频� Flannigan said.
Swiss Re91裸聊视频檚 data suggests that while the number of fires hasn91裸聊视频檛 changed that much, the area burned is increasing.
Don91裸聊视频檛 expect that to change, said Grollimund.
91裸聊视频淎 lot of the factors that foster wildfire risk seem to increase 91裸聊视频� longer, hotter, dryer summers; wetter winters; more vegetation; more lightning.
91裸聊视频淭here91裸聊视频檚 a lot of reasons why we think, if anything, (fire risk) is going to be increasing.91裸聊视频�
Bob Weber, The Canadian Press
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