Wildfires and their aftermath impact all Californians and cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars every year. How can we plan for and prevent wildfires, address them quickly to minimize damages, and ensure equitable recovery?

The How to Predict and Manage California's Fire Risk in a Changing Climate webinar brought together experts from numerous scientific disciplines at University of California institutions, along with researchers from neighboring universities. They make up an informal statewide climate and wildfire collaborative formed this year to identify what could be accomplished when working together and leveraging efforts.

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.

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.

The WIFIRE program was designed to predict the movement of wildfires plaguing California. WIFIRE maps are generated by two massive supercomputers named Comet and Gordon. Comet is a powerful tool, capable of performing two quadrillion computations per second. It takes all this computing power to stay ahead of a wind-driven wildfire.