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Google Wants to Get Better at Spotting Wildfires From Space
A partnership with the nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance and satellite manufacturer Muon Space is giving Google a better shot at tracking wildfires—and using AI to process all the data being collected.
That can make detecting fires in their earlier stages hard, because lots of heat signatures on the ground—hot roofs or even light reflected off water surfaces—can look very similar to wildfires to a thermal camera. The platform can leverage all the imagery from the satellites, collate the different image types, then analyze and compare that information to historical data to look for trends that typically signal the beginnings of a fire. That focus, along with the sweeping cuts to federal disaster programs like FEMA and the US Forest Service means that with fewer public resources to tackle the problem, private industry is moving to close those gaps.
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