Fires are typically fought with hoses and waterbombing aircraft, but in the future, drones and AI technology could play a bigger role. Following the deadly LA winter wildfires, there are concerns that Australia isn’t prepared to tackle fires year-round.
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00:00When it comes to the latest fire tech, China's well ahead of Australia.
00:10We don't yet have the tools to actually address those very large fires.
00:16But what's been developed on home soil in the ACT could change that.
00:22One of the main things we're looking at are these scout drones, which are kind of a drone
00:27that has all these sensors on it that can see a lightning ignition as soon as it starts.
00:33Aided by an on-board camera, the drone can fly towards a fire, pinpoint its exact location
00:41and map the impacted zone for responding ground crews.
00:46Also being explored are water gliders.
00:49Which are essentially disposable drones that you would fill with about half a tonne of
00:54water and potentially some retardant as well.
00:58This is a prototype designed to be dropped from an AC-130 cargo plane flying above any weather.
01:06They travel 400 kilometres per hour with a GPS onto the location that's provided to them
01:12by the scout drone.
01:14The New South Wales RFS have developed a world first AI system called Athena.
01:20We can have more than 120 fires burning at any one time and they'll always look at what's
01:24the number of structures that are most at risk from which fire over the next two, six, ten hours.
01:31And the state of Victoria is trialling a new project across seven of its 67 fire towers.
01:38We have installed AI cameras that their algorithms are designed to look for smoke.
01:44Still in its infancy, vigorous testing is required.
01:49It's not ready to take over from human beings right now.
01:53Australia has around 170 aircraft in the National Fleet to combat fires.
01:59But there are fears large air tankers leased from overseas could be in short supply.
02:05As bushfire seasons begin to overlap in the northern and southern hemispheres.
02:11Australia's maturing to that point where we have enough fire, we have enough technology,
02:18we have obviously the need for us to become more independent.
02:23With winter wildfires in LA, a former Californian firefighter says AI won't fix all our problems.
02:32It's a dangerous time but it's also an exciting time to kind of get ahead of this because
02:36it's only getting worse.
02:37Putting a spotlight on the lack of funding.
02:40We've wasted so many years, like if we'd had that funding three years ago we would probably
02:45have full scale water gliders right now.
02:48Innovation chasing the pace of climate change.