Artificial intelligence is helping identify and treat diseases faster with better results for humankind. Natural disasters like wildfires are next.
Fires in the Los Angeles area have claimed more than 16,000 homes and other structures so far this year. Damages in January were estimated as high as $164 billion, making it potentially the worst natural disaster financially in U.S. history, according to Bloomberg.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service have reportedly been redirecting resources in recent months toward beneficial fires to reduce overgrowth.
AI enables fire departments to keep more eyes on controlled burns, making them safer and more accepted in communities, say industry experts.
This is just like cancer treatment, said Sonia Kastner, CEO and founder of Pano AI, based in San Francisco. You can do early screening, catch it when it's in phase one, and hit it with really aggressive treatment so it doesn't progress - what we've seen this fire season is proof that our customers across the country use our solution in this way.
San Ramon, California-based Green Grid, which specializes in AI for utility companies, in September alerted its customer at a Big Bear resort that a fire started in the San Bernardino National Forest was near, said Chinmoy Saha, the company's CEO. By acting early, the resort customer was able to prepare for the needed suppression measures for the fire before it reached and became uncontrollable, he said. Due to the favorable weather conditions, the fire did not reach the customer territory.
In the recent Los Angeles area fires, Saha said he had been in discussion with a customer seeking to bring AI to cameras located at the site of the now-devasted Eaton fire that has claimed 17 lives and more than 9,000 buildings.
If we had our system there, this fire could have been mitigated, said Saha. Early detection is the key, so the fire is contained and it doesn't become a catastrophic wildfire.
Aiding First Responders With Accelerated Computing Pano's service provides human-in-the-loop AI-driven fire detection and alerts that have enabled fire departments to act faster than from 911 calls, accelerating containment efforts, said Kastner.
The company's Pano Station uses two ultra-high-definition cameras mounted on top of mountains like a cell tower, rotating 360 degrees every minute to capture views 10 miles in all directions. Those images are transmitted to the cloud every minute, where AI models running on GPUs do inference for smoke detection.
Pano AI's Pano Station in Rancho Palos Verdes Pano has a daytime smoke detection model and a nighttime near infrared model looking for smoke, as well as a nighttime geostationary satellite model. It has a human in the loop for verifying the detections, and it can be confirmed using digital zoom and time-lapse imagery.
It trains on NVIDIA GPUs locally and runs inference on NVIDIA GPUs in the cloud.
Harnessing AI for Controlled Burns California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) is carrying out prescribed fires, or controlled burns, to reduce dry vegetation that creates fuel for wildfires.
Controlled burns are necessary, and we didn't do a good job in California for the past 30 or 40 years, said Saha. Green Grid has deployed its trailer mounted AI camera sensors for monitoring fires and control burns before they go out of control.
Pano can be used by fire departments to monitor controlled burn zones with its AI-driven cameras to make sure that plumes of smoke don't appear outside of the permitted zone, maintaining safety.
The company has its cameras stationed at Rancho Palos Verdes, south of the recent Los Angeles area fires.
The area around the palisades fire was a very overgrown forest, and with a lot of dead fuels, so our hope is that there is going to be more focus on prescribed fires, said Kastner.
Embracing AI at Fire Departments for Faster Mitigation CAL FIRE is partnered with Alert California and UC San Diego for a network of cameras owned by investor-owned utilities, CAL FIRE, U.S. Forest Service and other U.S. Department of the Interior agencies.
Through that network, they've implemented an AI program that looks for new fire starts. It pans every two minutes and continuously updates, and Alert California has the most up-to-date information from this network.
If AI can enable fire departments to get to the scene of a fire when it's just a few acres, it's a lot easier to control than if it's 50 or more acres, said David Acuna, battalion chief at CAL FIRE, Clovis, California. This is particularly important in remote areas where it might take hours before a human sees and reports a fire, he added.
They use AI to determine if this looks like a new start, said Acuna. Now the key here is the program will then send an email to the relevant emergency command center, saying Hey, I think we spotted a new start, what do you think?' And it has to be verified by a human.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
13/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
YES Network and The Gotham Sports App will air seven Athletes Unlimited Softball...
12/06/2026
The United Football League will host its FAST Innovation Suite at the 2026 United Bowl presented by Credit One Bank on Saturday, June 13 at 3:00 p.m. ET at Audi...
12/06/2026
PTZOptics and LayerJot will present live demonstrations at InfoComm 2026 showing how natural-language AI prompting, robotic camera control, and on-device comput...
12/06/2026
MultiDyne Video and Fiber Optic Systems will exhibit at InfoComm 2026, featuring...
12/06/2026
Ateme has announced that Eurovision Services is using Ateme's software-based frame-rate conversion technology for international live event workflows. The de...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin and Simplestream have announced a partnership with Xperi to simplify the launch of OTT streaming services on TiVo OS smart TVs and devices. The collabo...
12/06/2026
Net Insight has announced that a multinational technology company is deploying a...
12/06/2026
MLB Players Inc., the business arm of the MLB Players Association, has announced a partnership with Athletes First to develop and sell brand partnerships across...
12/06/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D) and VuWall have announced the CommandKeyboard-Advanc...
12/06/2026
Comcast Smart Solutions announces a new smart technology deployment with Major L...
12/06/2026
Elevation Worship completed the initial leg of its Elevation Nights 2026 tour ...
12/06/2026
AJA Video Systems has announced KONA IP25 support for Colorfront Transkoder and ...
12/06/2026
Audinate Group Limited (ASX: AD8) will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth C7321, Ce...
12/06/2026
Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould has announced the appointment of Scott Adametz as Chief Technology Officer. The Pac-12 describes the hire as the first CTO appo...
12/06/2026
Grass Valley has announced AMPP Edge Live, a production system combining Grass Valley hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell GPU acceleration, and AMPP OS in a single platf...
12/06/2026
At one time a trailblazer with the launch of the Longhorn Network, the Universit...
12/06/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
12/06/2026
Chyron has announced PAINT 10.4, an update to its illustrated replay and sports ...
12/06/2026
SVP, Production Mark Gross: With the new schedule, with not having every Sunday night, it's given us an opportunity to take a step back and reimagine what ...
12/06/2026
For Televisa Technical Engineering Manager Roberto N nez Ibarra and the small team of 12 technicians and two production personnel at the IBC things are already ...
12/06/2026
Simple Steps to Better Acoustics - Taming The Small Room
Most of us mix in spare rooms and small spaces, where the acoustics fight us at every turn. At Gear...
12/06/2026
Latest addition expands vintage-inspired effects palette
Meris' Ottobit pedal range draws its inspiration from vintage gaming consoles, and the latest a...
12/06/2026
Soundbox-based chamber strings series expanded
Sonora Cinematic have just announced the launch of the second instalment in their Soundbox-based chamber stri...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
AJA Announces KONA IP25 Integration with Colorfront Software
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Collaboration enables uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110 I/O ...
12/06/2026
URSA Cine 12K LF Used to Create Visuals for STUTS' K-Arena Concert
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Organic visuals projected on a giant scre...
12/06/2026
MTI FILM Acquires Mango New Edit, Expanding its Global Post-Production Services ...
12/06/2026
AI Point Tracking Speeds Up Complex VFX Tracks in Mocha Pro
Jessie Electa Petrov June 12, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic point trac...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, has partnered with Simplestream, a provider of OTT and broadcast solutions, and technology provider Xperi, to...
12/06/2026
Leostream Corporation, creator of the world-leading Leostream Remote Desktop Access Platform, today announced Jigsaw24, a leading B2B IT solutions provider wit...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
How Aussie indie games and screen are levelling up with IP 11 June 2026
Ari Harrison, Pro Jank Footy
Head of Games Joey Egger and Ari Harrison of Umbrella sha...
12/06/2026
AgentPerf from Artificial Analysis, the industry's first agentic AI benchmark, gives developers, enterprises and infrastructure providers a clear way to com...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils First-Look Images from Villaflor, Santiago Mitre's New Film
Entertainment
12 June 2026
GlobalArgentina
Link copied to ...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Cross the Boundaries of the Real World into the Spirit Realm i...
12/06/2026
With John Daro, DI Colourist at Warner Bros. Water Tower Color Tuesday 23 June, 10am-1pm or 3-6pm
Restar Corporation
Tokyo
Register here
John Daro is the ...
12/06/2026
Meet The Grumpy Onion Ireland's newest online sensation, all he wants is to ...
12/06/2026
RT stays Up All Night with brand new daily 2026 FIFA World Cup Vodcast
Adding to the fun around 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament, RT has launched a brand new d...
Artificial intelligence is helping identify and treat diseases faster with better results for humankind. Natural disasters like wildfires are next.
