On one hand this effort sounds like a good way to generate some interesting concepts. On the other hand, as a long-time resident of a rural, wildfire-prone area, it's also important to educate the public and politicians that there is a large body of proven land management best practices that can already significantly improve prevention, control and mitigation. While we can always do better, we often aren't sufficiently utilizing the tools and techniques we already have.
The issues are more often political, economic and systemic than they are not knowing effective ways to further reduce risks and harm. Things like properly managed controlled burns are under-utilized because they are politically controversial. Enacting and enforcing codes mandating land management around private structures are politically unpopular. Out where I live, the local fire rangers just point-blank tell property owners "If you don't clear out all the brush and downed trees within a couple hundred feet of your structures, we're defending your house after the others that meet code" but no politician is willing to tell voters that. Worse, land owners continue to get permits issued to construct permanent dwellings in isolated locations which are extremely difficult to defend. If they want to build there, I say let them but also issue fair warning if they choose to proceed, they are on their own in the event of fire. Volunteer firefighters shouldn't need to risk their lives to defend houses which should never have been built in inaccessible, indefensible locations.
Yep, you don't fight massive fires with whizbang technical novelties. In the context of fires big enough to matter the only tools in your toolbox that are sufficiently scalable are very low tech.
The #1 tool in our toolbox is prevention. This is a multipart prize, with $5m going to fire detection, and $5m going to fire response. To me it feels like pushing for research into reducing fevers when the virus is the problem.
The low tech solutions are typically fuel load reduction, fire breaks, controlled burns, and community education. The first two are standard techniques used by the forestry industry, and they funnel a lot more than $11m into R&D.
That being said, new tech for monitoring and controlling controlled burns would be great.
Biden-Harris cut loose almost $200m for wildfire defense a month ago. California got more than half of it, WA got $25m, and OR got $24m. I'm very interested to see the results.
This.
In some place it’s the natural order to have forest fire from time to time.
If we prevent them long enough a huge one will happen at the worst time (dry, windy with lots of material to burn. At this point there very little you can do.
In the east cost there is rain regularly, so the usual thing is that wood, leaves rot instead, fires happen rarely.
"Raking the forest" while a totally viable approach in very specific strategic areas is just way way too expensive and time consuming in the general case. California has like 30 million acres of forest land. Removing brush from a single acre is a multi-day job with the right equipment. It just can't scale.
After the devastating bushfires in Eastern Australia in the summer of 2019/20 I started sketching ideas of a robot to that do that. My idea is that would identify fuel that could be ameliorated (possibly harvesting and burning in the machine, or mulching and burying). If it was solar powered it could possibly just plod along. That said I think more controlled burns such as were practised by our indigenous people seems to be the most practical.
Thanks for this comment. When reading the part where the xprize site says "especially in the expanding Wildland-Urban Interface, where homes, businesses, and major infrastructure are most at risk"
To me, this is more of a predicament around what our human expectations are and how to appropriately live, especially if populations are desiring to build settlement structures in ways that create wildlife urban interface.
> A controlled or prescribed burn, also known as hazard reduction burning, [1] backfire, swailing, or a burn-off, [2] is a fire set intentionally for purposes of forest management, fire suppression, farming, prairie restoration or greenhouse gas abatement. A controlled burn may also refer to the intentional burning of slash and fuels through burn piles. [3] Fire is a natural part of both forest and grassland ecology and controlled fire can be a tool for foresters.
> The metal-free water-based batteries are unique from those that utilize cobalt in their lithium-ion form. The research group’s focus on this type of battery stems from a desire for greater control over the domestic supply chain as cobalt and lithium are commonly sourced from outside the country. Additionally, the batteries’ safer chemistry could prevent fires.
That's a good list of useful links. From my experience as a home owner in a high-risk area, I'd add some of the things which can make a big difference are often surprisingly simple. In addition to managing your own land properly, make sure you have a large enough water tank to support firefighters in protecting your land. We got a well tank five times bigger than our typical usage needs. Another key thing is to put your tank next to where a fire truck can access it easily and get the proper adapter installed so the fire truck can direct connect to your tank (it's not included in most).
We also widened the access road on our property to support larger fire trucks and dozers. Obviously, fire-resistant construction materials and techniques are a huge help and not all require extensive retrofitting. There are spark resistant attic air access covers which are easy to install. We needed to re-roof and remodel anyway so we went with fire-resistant roofing and concrete siding. It's also important to have non-cellular local communications because the cell towers often go out first (our community uses 2-meter handsets for emergency comms). Doing those things along with the fact we've cleared all trees and brush out beyond 300 feet and only have metal out-buildings caused our local fire chief to comment that if everyone did what we've done, protecting the whole region would be three times easier. We also have enough generator power (on auto-failover) to pump our own well water to wet down our house and surroundings. With that our house has a really strong probability of surviving with no external help even if our property is directly hit by a major wildfire.
Edit to Add:
I forgot to mention another key thing. If you live in a place like this, there's often only a single narrow public road serving your property and others nearby. Make sure you have transportation that'll let you get out cross-country if the road is blocked by either fire or heavy equipment. We have AWD ATVs fueled and always ready to go (plus they are handy around big properties like this). Between us and our neighbors we have a plan to get everyone on our road out without outside help - including a few elderly folk who will need assistance. Firefighters needing to rescue unprepared residents diverts vital resources from fighting the fire and clogs roads - which just makes everything else worse.
Great comments and advice. My neighborhood burned in the #GlassFire [0]. While our property was severely damaged, our home survived, due to many of the hardening techniques you mentioned and great work by CalFire. We had evacuated the night before and were staying in a local hotel watching the flames advance on our house via our security cameras. (Redundant net connections and a generator kept everything online). As our deck started to burn I called 911 to report it, figuring nothing would happen. About 20 minutes later a fireman walked into the frame of the camera and 2 minutes later the deck was out and the house was saved. I was cheering like I won the Super Bowl. So I really appreciate all the hardening I did, on-site water and CalFire.
When we rebuilt the exterior, I installed a set of sprinklers that ring the house and cover the roof/deck. They are not designed to fight the fire, instead I can activate them before a fire arrives to get things good and wet. This perimeter reduces the available fuels, reduces the heat load on the structure and reduces the risk of ember cast. It was a fun project with an ESP controller to sequence the valves and provide remote control.
Over the last few years, the Alert Wildfire Camera system, now over 700 cameras, has been a valuable resource. [1] Early detection of the fire, before it grows to extreme size has made a big difference. In the North Bay of California last year, this early detection and CalFire having nearby Air Attack resources on standby kept many small fires from becoming large ones in this area.
Another great resource is the Watch Duty app. [2] This is a non-profit, volunteer, but extremely professional service. They started in Northern California and are rapidly expanding. It is the go-to resource for Wildfire related information in the area.
Lastly, if anyone is looking at the X prize for satellite detection, I’d spend some time researching MODIS/VIIRS data products from NASA. [3]. A good starting point in some of the challenges of wildfire detection from space.
Here's a prompt to help with selecting sustainable building materials: """Generate a JSON-LD document of data with citations comparing building materials by: R-value, Fire Resistance Rating, typical structural integrity longevity in terms of years, VOCs at year 1 and year 5, and Sustainability factors like watt-hours and carbon and other pollutive outputs to produce, transport, distribute, install, and maintain . Include hempcrete (hemp and lime, which can be made from algae), rammed earth with and without shredded hemp hurds, wood, structural concrete, bamboo, and other emerging sustainable building materials.
Demonstrate loading the JSON data into a Pandas DataFrame and how to sort by multiple columns (with references to the docs for the tools used), and how to load the data into pygwalker."""
> a set of sprinklers that ring the house and cover the roof/deck. They are not designed to fight the fire, instead I can activate them before a fire arrives to get things good and wet. This perimeter reduces the available fuels, reduces the heat load on the structure and reduces the risk of ember cast. It was a fun project with an ESP controller to sequence the valves and provide remote control.
I searched a bit and couldn't find any smart home integrations that automatically hopefully turn the lawn and garden sprinklers on when a fire alarm goes off.
Are there any good reasons to not have that be a standard default feature if both smoke detectors and sprinklers are connected to a smart home system?
Coming from an operations perspective, you want to look at the downstream consequences of automation which depend on the details of the installed system. E.g. from this thread: automation might drain water from the 5x oversized well tank before firefighters arrive, seems to me that whether or not that is preferable depends on the details.
> Problem: #airogel made of CO² is an excellent insulator that's useful for many applications; but it needs structure, so foam+airogel but that requires smelly foam
> Possible solution: Cause structure to form in the airogel.
Backpack shoulder straps on e.g. Jansport backpacks have a geometric rubber mesh that's visible through a plastic window.
## Possible methods of causing structure to form in aerogel
- EM Hz: literally play EM waves (and possibly deliberately inverse convolutions) at the {#airogel,} production process
- Titratation
- Centrifugation
- "Volt grid": apply volts/amps/Hz patterns with a probe array
- Thermal/photonic bath 3d printing
- Pour a lattice-like lens as large as the aerogel sections and allow solar to cause it to slowly congeal to a more structural form in advantageous shapes
> FWIU we already have enough abandoned mines in the world to do all of our energy storage needs?
Here's a prompt for this one, for the AI:
"Let's think step-by-step: how much depth or volume of empty mines are needed to solve for US energy storage demand with gravitational potential energy storage drones on or off tracks in abandoned mines? Please respond with constants and code as Python SymPy code with a pytest test_main and Hypothesis @given decorator tests"
yep. xprize is a pile of money thay billionaires threw around to avoid taxes and get rockets... then forgot about.
some craft ong parasites infiltrated it and now it's a huge money maker for them. and they sell the prizes to anyone needing PR. did you just leaked oil near first world waters? let's do a xprize on oil clean up drones ny highschoolers!
the org chart is a bunch of VPs taking home a cool mi a year, with a bunch of sales person underneath (director of charity. director of giving. etc. look at their open positions page at any point in time. they churn these fast too.)
they will not focus on any meaningful result, like you outlined. only on the innovation as a cult PR.
for example, their rain forest one can be solved tomorrow by keeping the US out of couping countries with rainforest, if you were to trust data. but i guess that won't get the vote of a Hollywood actor or a swiss professor who literally have a course on using drones for ecology preservation.
The access issue is huge and crosses over in to other issues (Inaccessible public land). I didn’t do wildland firefighting when I was a volunteer firefighter but the other people around talked about it a lot. There were areas that had to pay more to be served by neighboring agencies.
The issues are more often political, economic and systemic than they are not knowing effective ways to further reduce risks and harm. Things like properly managed controlled burns are under-utilized because they are politically controversial. Enacting and enforcing codes mandating land management around private structures are politically unpopular. Out where I live, the local fire rangers just point-blank tell property owners "If you don't clear out all the brush and downed trees within a couple hundred feet of your structures, we're defending your house after the others that meet code" but no politician is willing to tell voters that. Worse, land owners continue to get permits issued to construct permanent dwellings in isolated locations which are extremely difficult to defend. If they want to build there, I say let them but also issue fair warning if they choose to proceed, they are on their own in the event of fire. Volunteer firefighters shouldn't need to risk their lives to defend houses which should never have been built in inaccessible, indefensible locations.