Wildfires aren't really the problem on a global scale. They are a bit of a pain in Australia, and US West coast sure.
The real problematic fires are currently man-made and entirely purposefully lit, i.e slash and burn agriculture. They are destroying the air and huge amounts of rainforest and jungle in places like Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Brazil, etc.
So while I commend the effort I think the bigger problem at hand is working out how to switch these agriculture systems over to more modern techniques and prevent further destruction of perhaps irreplaceable forests.
Most wildfires are generally in fire-prone areas where fires is a frequent and necessary part of life, detecting it sooner to save lives is good, developing better back-burning techniques to reduce intensity during fire season is also good. Just not as much impact on the world as aforementioned agricultural burning.
Even though we are at the tail end of the burning season in SEA you can still see how massive the problem is from this satelite detector run by NASA: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/
Eh, I think they’re more than “a bit of a pain” in Australia. Bushfire season always kills a few people every year, but it’s only because of us taking fires very seriously and having defense in depth and early evacuation protocols that it doesn’t kill way more. There are cases like 2009 where more than 170 people died, which still may not sound like much for a population of 20 million, but it was mostly in the Kinglake and Marysville areas (roughly 100 deaths out of the area’s population of several thousand). It is a very grave risk with very serious mitigation efforts that largely work. If fire management and response were to break down even a little bit, though, the number of deaths will skyrocket. XPRIZE success on wildfires will be deeply appreciated here.
Yeah I grew up in rural Australia. I get why it would be useful.
Just travelling opened my eyes to much bigger fire problems is all. The pollution caused by slash and burn is estimated to cause ~11k deaths a year in Thailand alone, I imagine the numbers are much worse in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.
I'm not saying I don't appreciate improvements in detecting and maybe preventing bush fires just trying to raise awareness of a larger more dangerous issue in the world that gets little to no attention because it's outside of Western media sphere.
I am a bit wary of arguments from pollution or other indirect deaths due to fire. (I do accept them, but I am still wary.)
For example, the 2019-20 bushfire season is cited as 33 direct and 417 indirect deaths. Direct deaths vary mostly with fire detection, response, and evacuation. Indirect deaths vary mostly with fire volume and wind patterns (19-20 killed so many because the weather abnormally pushed pollution into heavily populated areas, and kept it there for an abnormally long time). It seems hard to control fire volume (and really hard to control weather patterns), while it seems easy to control detection, response, and evacuation.
I do take your point that it seems easy to control fire volume specifically for slash-and-burn agriculture in South East Asia, as those are mostly artificially created fires and we could stop them from doing that.
The real problematic fires are currently man-made and entirely purposefully lit, i.e slash and burn agriculture. They are destroying the air and huge amounts of rainforest and jungle in places like Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Brazil, etc.
So while I commend the effort I think the bigger problem at hand is working out how to switch these agriculture systems over to more modern techniques and prevent further destruction of perhaps irreplaceable forests.
Most wildfires are generally in fire-prone areas where fires is a frequent and necessary part of life, detecting it sooner to save lives is good, developing better back-burning techniques to reduce intensity during fire season is also good. Just not as much impact on the world as aforementioned agricultural burning.
Even though we are at the tail end of the burning season in SEA you can still see how massive the problem is from this satelite detector run by NASA: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/