The BulleTin • Sunday, March 21, 2021 A7
CALIFORNIA
County tests technology to combat wildfires
BY ALEX WIGGLESWORTH
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — Sonoma
County, California, is add-
ing artificial intelligence to its
wildfire-fighting arsenal.
The county has entered into
an agreement with the South
Korean firm Alchera to out-
fit its network of fire-spotting
cameras with software that de-
tects wildfire activity and then
alerts authorities. The tech-
nology sifts through past and
current images of terrain and
searches for certain changes,
such as flames burning in
darkness, or a smoky haze ob-
scuring a tree-lined hillside,
according to Chris Godley, the
county’s director of emergency
management.
But emergency workers will
first have to “teach” the system
to differentiate between im-
ages that show fire smoke, and
others that might show clouds,
fog, or vapor from geothermal
geysers. The software will use
feedback from humans to re-
fine its algorithm and will even-
tually be able to detect fires on
its own — or at least that’s what
county officials hope.
“It’s kind of like learning
how to read,” Godley said.
“What letters can I put to-
gether to make up a word?”
The county activated the
technology Wednesday and
received 16 positive reports of
smoke — all of which turned
out to be permitted burns, he
said. Once a seasonal ban on
controlled burns goes into ef-
fect in April or May, the county
plans to ramp up the testing and
feedback phase. The hope is that
by November, the system will no
longer need to be “taught” and
can start providing reliable intel-
ligence, Godley said.
“This is really cutting-edge
work, to bring this capability
into the hands of local first re-
sponders,” Godley said. “It’s go-
ing to take us awhile to make
sure we get the bugs out, as it
were, and that we really can de-
Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times file
An air tanker drops fire retardant during a wildfire in 2020 in Chino Hills, California.
pend on it because ultimately
this is a lifesaving mission.”
The technology is intended
to help officials investigate po-
tential fire starts earlier so they
can get personnel out to them
more quickly and issue neces-
sary evacuation advisories. It
will be particularly useful in
spotting fires at night, when
fewer bystanders are likely to
see smoke and flames and call
authorities, as well as in remote
areas, Godley said.
Sonoma County chose Al-
chera because it has performed
“This is really cutting-edge work, to bring this capability
into the hands of local first responders. It’s going to take
us awhile to make sure we get the bugs out, as it were, and
that we really can depend on it because ultimately this is a
lifesaving mission.”
— Chris Godley, Sonoma County’s director of emergency management
similar work with wildfires in
Australia, and offered a com-
petitive rate as it was eager to
test the system in the U.S. mar-
ket, Godley said. Three-quar-
ters of the funding for the
$300,000-agreement will come
from a hazard mitigation grant
from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. The
county will provide a $75,000
local match.
The remainder of the
$2.7-million FEMA grant is
being used to strengthen the
county’s existing wildfire sur-
veillance network by adding
six cameras, which brings the
total to 26. The grant will also
be used to reinforce the com-
munications network that
supports the cameras, ensur-
ing that they are able to re-
liably transmit data back to
emergency responders, even if
power goes out or is turned off,
Godley said.
Sonoma County’s cameras
are part of the ALERTWild-
fire system, a network of about
746 cameras statewide that
are linked by a common view-
ing platform coordinated by
UC San Diego, the University
of Oregon and the University
of Nevada, Reno. Local dis-
patch centers can maneuver
the cameras by rotating, pan-
ning and zooming in or out,
and the public can watch the
feeds online. Sonoma County
sometimes uses the cameras to
scope out road conditions or
check for flooding near river
areas, but they’re mostly used
to inform firefighting efforts,
Godley said.
The county started to install
the cameras on radio commu-
nication towers after a series
of devastating fires in 2017, in-
cluding the Tubbs fire, which
killed 22 people and destroyed
more than 5,000 homes. The
network has already proven
helpful to local firefighting ef-
forts, Godley said. When a fire
breaks out, crews study the
footage to determine its exact
location and to glean key de-
tails about its behavior, such
as how quickly it’s spreading,
where it’s headed and what lo-
cal wind conditions are like, he
said. Such information is cru-
cial to determining what areas
might need to be evacuated.
“This is not just to support
firefighters,” Godley said. “But
also, critically, it’s to help us ed-
ucate and inform our warning
efforts.”
Sonoma County’s contract
with Alchera runs through
February 2023. If the technol-
ogy is successful, officials ex-
pect other places will adopt it,
particularly since it plugs into
the camera network that’s al-
ready in place statewide.
“We ultimately believe its
potential could be realized in a
year or two,” Godley said. “And
it could really have a dramatic
impact here in California.”
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