Stretched by longer, deadlier fire seasons, officials are using artificial intelligence to more closely track blazes and more judiciously steer resources. The Glass Fire in California’s wine country prompted mandatory evacuation orders for Calistoga, a city of more than 5,200.

Wildland fires and related hazards are increasing globally. A common observation across these large events is that fire behavior is changing to be more destructive, making applied fire research more important and time critical. The WIFIRE cyberinfrastructure took the first steps to tackle this problem with a goal to create an integrated system, data and visualization services, and workflows for wildfire monitoring, simulation, and response.

In California, large fires do often occur in late summer—as has occurred this year. But in past years, most of the deadliest and most destructive blazes have tended to come toward the end of the dry season.

Of all the deadly ramifications of climate change, wildfires might be the most immediate. Though humans start most fires, hotter and drier conditions have led to longer “fire seasons” and a higher number of blazes that spread farther and faster.

The [Southern California Edison] camera installation was done in partnership with UC San Diego, the University of Oregon and the University of Nevada, Reno. The utility owns the equipment and feeds the images into the wider, university-run network, AlertWildfire.

Researchers at UC San Diego are working on cutting edge technology to combat the constant threat of wildfires in California. The WIFIRE Lab is a collaboration between the Qualcomm Institute and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.

WIFIRE provides an end-to-end management infrastructure from data sensing and collection to modeling efforts, using a continuum of computing methods that integrate edge, cloud, and high-performance computing.

California fire crews abandon hand-drawn maps for up-to-date information on phones to track and extinguish blazes faster.

The WIFIRE team take long shifts, sometimes working 24/7 in order to monitor evolving fires.

Fighting fires such as the Copper Fire and the Palisades Fire, which covered 42 acres in Los Angeles, is not entirely left to firefighters. Using technology from the San Diego Computer Center at UC San Diego, firefighters can strategize knowing where fires will spread, convenient when resources are limited.