Spotting dead and downed trees that can fuel explosive fires is like searching for a needle in a haystack for forestry crews. Not so for drones, which can survey thousands of acres in a single afternoon, easily accessing landscapes that people generally can’t.
Forest managers are increasingly turning to them and other aerial imagery to pick out potential hotspots otherwise hidden in plain sight in a bid to protect critical infrastructure.
Wildfires caused more than C$1 billion ($711 million) in insured losses across Canada and more than in total economic losses across the US in 2023 alone, and major fires have ripped across the Mediterranean and other regions. Startups are deploying powerful cameras attached to low-flying drones and custom-built zeppelins laden with sensors to spot potential hotspots across wide swaths of airspace.
“Emergency preparedness and management and response are big, obvious fits right out of the gate,” said Bill Lakeland, co-founder and chief executive officer of , a drone imaging company based in British Columbia that has lined up a roughly $12 million Series A fundraising round led by Blockchange Ventures, an investment firm focused on blockchain technology.
Historically, forest managers have relied on , aerial captured by plane or by helicopter, and on-the-ground about fire risks. But those tools are far less nimble and comprehensive — and in some cases, far more costly — than deploying consumer drones, said David Huntley, a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada who works on wildfire threats and landslides, which frequently occur in burn scars.
“A $5,000 drone is going to yield really fabulous results,” Huntley said. “You wouldn’t get much in the way of satellite imagery for $5,000 and would barely be able to take off the ground” with fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters.
Spexi — which has contracted with government and emergency management agencies across Canada — relies on a network of freelance pilots, who sign up for paid “missions” and agree to download proprietary software that allows the company to take control of their drones. The startup dispatches them on customized flights to capture thousands of photographs across remote and urban regions, which are authenticated using blockchain encryption, Lakeland said.
Detecting fire or landslide hazards in advance requires “a lot of photographs,” Huntley said. “This is always one of our stumbling blocks with our surveys — how to handle large amounts of data and then do the processing.”
Using artificial intelligence helps relieve that burden: Researchers at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and Northeastern University in Vancouver trained a on Spexi’s data to identify extreme fire risks from fuel loads hidden in vulnerable forests and near critical infrastructure, including utility right-of-ways, highways and railroads. The model — which can pick out trees damaged by invasive beetles, fallen logs and debris, and dead trees that are primed to burn — helps produce user-friendly, color-coded maps that allow forest managers and transportation officials to target high-risk areas.
Another startup, BurnBot, dispatches drones to survey landscapes and largely focuses on California. In Europe, emergency managers also use relatively low-flying drones to map vegetation and dump water and flame retardant on active wildfires.
Startups are also targeting airspace higher up, including , a New Mexico-based startup. The company has designed solar-powered, zeppelin-like aircraft that can stay aloft for up to a day at altitudes between 60,000 feet and 65,000 feet, transmitting targeted sensor readings, images and data back to Earth.
Sceye entered into unfunded research partnerships this fall with NASA and the US Geological Survey to test its zeppelins’ remote monitoring capabilities.
In 2025, Sceye hopes to run a long-durationsurveillance mission over a fire-prone corner of the US West, “looking at what is most likely to ignite” and where fire could travel, said CEO and founder Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen. Doing so would help “fire services pre-position and prioritize” where to send supplies and firefighters.
These technologies have applications beyond fires. Spexi has been surveying cities and critical infrastructure on government contracts, and it’s also interested in working with insurance companies that want to use aerial images to help verify damage claims after a disaster.
Photograph: Scenes from the 2016 wildfire near Fort McMurray, Alberta. Photo credit: Darryl Dyck/Bloomberg
Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire
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