Fighting fires with AI, drones and sensors. How high tech could help battle future blazes

An autonomous Black Hawk helicopter demonstrates an aerial water drop Oct. 29 in Connecticut. “As we experience these more frequent and severe fires, expanding response capacity to include being able to respond at night in smoky conditions, and in high winds, becomes more important.” Brodie is among a small but growing cadre of entrepreneurs in California promising new technology — much of it powered by artificial intelligence — that could dramatically change how firefighters prevent and fight wildfires. “It’s just a completely different scale…We’re gonna have to come up with new ways to fight,” said Josh Wilkins, a retired San Bernardino County Fire Department fire captain. About 450 so-called Alpha and Beta sensors, which can cost a few thousand dollars each, have been deployed to areas including Orange County, Bay Area cities and have helped to detect fires in Hawaii, Colorado and Oakland, Calif. To support the initiative, Homeland Security received $4 million in funding over four years, but the agency hasn’t been able to secure more federal money, said Jeff Booth, director of the Sensors and Platforms Technology Center for the department’s Science and Technology Directorate. “When there’s that partnership between the innovators in the fire community and technologists, that’s what opens up entirely new tools, technologies and markets,” said Brodie, the chief executive.