From 2017 to 2020, wildfires burned an average of 8.8 million acres in the US, according to data published by National Inter Agency Coordination Center, the agency that oversees all inter-agency coordination activities throughout the United States.
There has been a lot of destruction this year as well. The Dixie Fire has become the second largest fire in Northern California Forest fire in the history of the state. Already this year, 568,000 acres of land have been burned by wildfires in Italy, Greece and Turkey, according to the U.S. NASA. According to a report in The Guardian, 343 megatons of carbon has been released into the environment due to forest fires.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis had to apologize on Monday for failing to deal with the raging fires that raged across Greece. (Reuters Photo)
While several options are being worked out to meet this threat, such as a return to indigenous practices, the technology from the Los Angeles-based company could help in the fight against wildfires.
KSI Data Sciences is a company that has developed technology that enables the delivery of live footage collected by drone and other equipment from remote areas.
“We have always worked on the hypothesis that the only value for drones is actually for the data they produce,” John Gaster, founder, KSI Data Sciences, said in a conversation with Timesofindia.com.
The idea behind the venture is to enable effective and collaborative decision making in a crisis, something that can certainly be helpful in an emergency like a wildfire.
So the company has created a technology called mission keeper, available on both mobile and desktop, allows live streaming of drone footage through its app. It takes video from the drone controller and uses cloud storage and then streams it for wider access.
One feature that sets it apart is that there is no limit to the number of users who can watch or stream these videos.
“You can have an incident where all of a sudden I have to invite people from several different agencies to see what’s going on. Wildfire is a perfect example. And so you can’t get to the point where Because of the low latency, you can only support five users,” Gaster said.
Gester, a graduate of the London School of Economics, came up with the idea for KSI in the early 200s, working with the US government on video footage from drones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Learning from the challenges faced during this tenure, Gaster founded KSI in 2015 to enter the market.
The application allows the user to access multiple videos, chat features, option to store a set of videos and view the data for future use.
The company is in talks with the Los Angeles Fire Department for the use of its technology. The Fire Department, New York is also testing KSI’s system. It is also part of FirstNet – a nationwide network designed for US first responders and plans to begin operating in Canada and Germany.
While the company’s hardware solutions could potentially help firefighters, the company’s operations aren’t limited to that, with uses ranging from agriculture to site inspections.
.