Google Backs AI-Powered Satellite Constellation for Early Wildfire Detection

Google to invest in satellites and AI to better detect wildfires

By Melissa Gomez, Los Angeles Times The Tribune Content Agency LOS ANGELES - Amid an outbreak of recent wildfires in California, Google announced a commitment to spend $13 million to improve satellite imaging to help track and detect wildfires, starting as early as next year. FireSat, a constellation of more than 50 satellites, will be able to detect wildfires as small as the size of a classroom, about 16 by 16 feet, and the first satellite will launch in early 2025, the media giant announced Monday. Firefighting authorities currently rely on satellite imagery that detects wildfires but only when they reach about the size of a football field, or more than an acre. "We realized that if we can pair satellites with machine learning and artificial intelligence, it was the perfect platform to generate real-time operational intelligence on fires," Christopher Van Arsdale, who leads the Google Research Climate & Energy group and is chairman of the Earth Fire Alliance, said in a video announcement. The initiative is being led by the Earth Fire Alliance, a nonprofit that was launched in May to create FireSat and develop wildfire datasets, with funding from Google and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Satellite images currently might confuse clouds or a smokestack for fires, Van Arsdale said. Using machine learning, a team at Google built a camera that optimized the technology for fire detection, and the team tested it over controlled burn areas. The constellation of satellites will be able to provide updated satellite imagery to firefighters every 20 minutes to help them put out fires before they become large and destructive. "In addition to supporting emergency response efforts, FireSat's data will be used to create a global historical record of fire spread, helping Google and scientists to better model and understand wildfire behavior and spread," the company said. Google said the project is part of the company's effort to help communities address the effects of climate change. California officials already have moved toward using AI to better track wildfires. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection partnered with UC San Diego to develop a new AI pilot project that maintains 1,039 high-definition cameras on towers and mountain peaks throughout the state to keep an eye out for smoke and other anomalies and alerts Cal Fire. Jason Forthhofer, a research mechanical engineer with the U.S. Forest Service, said the FireSat project also will help to collect data to better train firefighters on how to interact with wildfires and understand how they are affected by changing conditions. "We'll be able to teach firefighters what dryness does to a fire, or wind, or a change in fuel type, because we have seen so many firefighters die on fires when they don't anticipate what the fire's going to do," he said. Southern California is enduring an extremely active wildfire season, with three fast-moving blazes burning more than 100,000 acres and forcing thousands to evacuate as well as destroying dozens of structures.

Google is funding an AI-powered satellite constellation that will spot wildfires faster

The Earth Fire Alliance collaboration will also leverage Google's AI wildfire tools, which have been trained to detect early indications of wildfires and track their progression, to draw additional insights from the data. The images and analysis will be provided free to fire agencies around the world, helping to improve understanding of where fires are, where they're moving, and how hot they're burning. The information could help agencies stamp out small fires before they turn into raging infernos, place limited firefighting resources where they'll do the most good, and evacuate people along the safest paths. "In the satellite image of the Earth, a lot of things can be mistaken for a fire: a glint, a hot roof, smoke from another fire," says Chris Van Arsdale, climate and energy research lead at Google Research and chairman of the Earth Fire Alliance. "Detecting fires becomes a game of looking for needles in a world of haystacks. Solving this will enable first responders to act quickly and precisely when a fire is detected." Some details of FireSat were unveiled earlier this year. But the organizations involved will announce additional information about their plans today, including the news that Google.org, the company's charitable arm, has provided $13 million to the program and that the inaugural launch is scheduled to occur next year. The news comes as large fires rage across millions of acres in the western US, putting people and property at risk. The blazes include the Line Fire in Southern California, the Shoe Fly Fire in central Oregon, and the Davis Fire south of Reno, Nevada. Wildfires have become more frequent, extreme, and dangerous in recent decades. That, in part, is a consequence of climate change: Rising temperatures suck the moisture from trees, shrubs, and grasses. But fires increasingly contribute to global warming as well. A recent study found that the fires that scorched millions of acres across Canada last year pumped out 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide, four times the annual pollution produced by the airline industry.

Google backs privately funded satellite constellation for wildfire detection

Space is more accessible than ever thanks to the proliferation of small satellites and more affordable launch prices, which opened the door to bespoke applications like global pollution monitoring, crop observations, and new ways of collecting weather and climate data. Now you can add wildfire detection to the list. Satellites have observed wildfires from space for decades, but a new initiative partially funded by Google's philanthropic arm aims to deploy more than 50 small satellites in low-Earth orbit to pinpoint flare-ups as small as a classroom anywhere in the world. The FireSat constellation, managed by a nonprofit called Earth Fire Alliance (EFA), will be the first satellite fleet dedicated to detecting and tracking wildfires. Google announced a fresh investment of $13 million in the FireSat constellation Monday, building on the tech giant's previous contributions to support the development of custom infrared sensors for the FireSat satellites. Google's funding commitment will maintain the schedule for the launch of the first FireSat pathfinder satellite next year, EFA said. The first batch of satellites to form an operational constellation could launch in 2026. "Today's announcement marks a significant milestone and step towards transforming the way we interact with fire," Earth Fire Alliance said in a statement. "As fires become more intense, and spread faster, we believe radical collaboration is key to driving much needed innovation in fire management and climate action." A new use case The FireSat satellites will be built by Muon Space, a California-based satellite manufacturing startup. Each of the Muon Space-built microsatellites will have six-band multispectral infrared instruments, eyeing a swath of Earth some 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) wide, to pinpoint hotspots from wildfires. The satellites will have the sensitivity to find wildfires as small as 16 by 16 feet (5 by 5 meters). The network will use Google AI to rapidly compare observations ofany area of this size with previous imagery to determine if there is a fire, according to Google. AI will also take into account factors like nearby infrastructure and local weather in each fire assessment. Google said it validated its detection model for smaller fires and established a baseline dataset for the AI by flying sensors over controlled burns. FireSat's partners announced the constellation in May after five years of development. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Moore Foundation, and the Minderoo Foundation also support the FireSat program. After detecting a wildfire, it's crucial for FireSat to quickly disseminate the location and size of a fire to emergency responders. With the first three satellites, the FireSat constellation will observe every point on Earth at least twice per day. "At full capability with 50+ satellites, the revisit times for most of the globe improve to 20 minutes, with the most wildfire-prone regions benefitting from sampling intervals as short as nine minutes," Muon Space said in a statement. NASA operates a fire-detection system using satellite observations from the agency's Earth-observing missions, but none offer the sensitivity, resolution, or response time of FireSat. More than 200 commercial Earth-imaging satellites owned by Planet provide fresh views of almost all of Earth's land masses daily. These satellites can also detect wildfires, but the imagers on Planet's spacecraft have a narrower field of view than those envisioned by FireSat. The roster of nonprofit and philanthropic backers of the FireSat constellation bears a resemblance to the group of foundations that funded MethaneSAT, which launched earlier this year. MethaneSAT, as its name suggests, is monitoring methane emissions from space, and the project was mainly financed by private contributions. Google is also a partner in MethaneSAT, where it is integrating AI technology into data analysis, and making the data accessible with Google Earth. All of this is made possible thanks to lower barriers to entry to spaceflight for small businesses, research institutions, and philanthropic endeavors. There's more private investment in satellite manufacturing companies than in any other sector of the space market, including launch. The proliferation of satellite manufacturers has made it more affordable to purchase a spacecraft or a fleet of satellites. And it's cheaper to put a satellite into orbit. SpaceX charges $1 million to launch a roughly 366-pound (166-kilogram) payload on one of its Transporter rideshare missions on a Falcon 9 rocket, significantly less than any other launch company. MethaneSAT launched on a Transporter rideshare mission earlier this year, and although officials haven't announced a launch provider for FireSat, SpaceX is the company to beat.

Google and Muon Space join forces to continuously scan the Earth for wildfires | TechCrunch

Next year, even wildfires won't be able to hide from Google. The company is working with Muon Space, the Earth Fire Alliance, and others to launch FireSat, a constellation of satellites that will monitor the Earth's surface for wildfires, updating imagery for authorities every 20 minutes. Google helped develop the infrared sensors that'll look for telltale heat signatures and feed them to its AI fire detection models. Currently, fire agencies have had to navigate a frustrating trade off when it came to satellite imagery: they could get it infrequently at high resolution or faster at low resolution. The goal with FireSat is to detect fires as small as five square meters, small enough and early that they might be stamped out before they turn into forest-devouring conflagrations. The first satellite launches in early 2025, with the remaining 50 or so to launch over the coming years.