Colorado lawmakers look to AI for early wildfire detection

DENVER (AP) — A year after the most destructive wildfire in the state’s history scorched nearly 1,100 homes, Colorado lawmakers are considering joining other Western states by adopting artificial intelligence in the hopes of detecting blazes before they burn out of control.

A proposal that legislators will discuss in a hearing, Thursday, would create a $2 million pilot program to station cameras on mountaintops in high-risk locations. An artificial intelligence program developed by a private company would analyze the images from cameras with 10-mile radiuses with the aim of detecting something that could signal the start of a blaze.

It is part of an ongoing effort by firefighters to use new technology to become smarter about how they prepare and better position their resources. Fire lookout towers once staffed by humans have largely been replaced by cameras in remote areas, many of them in high-definition and armed with artificial intelligence to discern a smoke plume from morning fog.

There are hundreds of such cameras scattered across California, Nevada and Oregon, and even casual viewers can remotely watch wildfires in real time.

A historic drought and recent heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West and scientists say warming weather will continue to make fires more frequent and destructive.

Record-breaking storms that drenched California with more than 11 inches of rain in recent weeks and big snow dumps in other states have improved conditions in the short-term, but the drought persists across most of Nevada, California and Utah, and large areas of other Western states, according to a Tuesday report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The goal of the Colorado program would be for cameras and an AI algorithm to detect a plume of smoke and alert first responders who can stomp out the conflagration before it grows, said Don Coram, a former Republican Colorado state senator who first backed the idea and encouraged this year’s sponsor, Rep. Cleave Simpson, a Republican and rancher.