Colorado looks to artificial intelligence to detect wildfire threats

“It can detect just a wisp of smoke and it’s that type of situation in remote areas that could save forests and homes and properties and lives,” Democratic state Sen. Joann Ginal, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in the hearing.

The Colorado program would support 40 fixed camera stations and six more mobile stations that can be moved to monitor ongoing fires, Ben Miller, the director at the Center of Excellence, which researches technology for firefighting, said at Thursday’s hearing.

The AI algorithm behind the camera would try to detect a plume of smoke and alert first responders early, said Miller, who pointed to a structure fire caught by AI technology near the city of Boulder in December as an example.

Boulder County had partnered with an AI wildfire detection company called Pano AI, and the software had alerted authorities of the fire around the time the first 911 call arrived, Miller said. One home was destroyed and another damaged before the fire was contained — a far better outcome than a year before when the Marshal Fire, also near Boulder, burned over 1,000 structures.

“The more you train the model, the better and better it gets,” said Miller, who added that his agency is very interested in the technology but that it’s still burgeoning and that a pilot program is a good place to start.

Pano AI began working with cities, including the ski resort town of Aspen, Colo., and has expanded to cities, counties and even Pacific Gas & Electric in six states. Kathryn Williams, Pano AI’s director of government development who testified at the hearing, said “AI machine learning is new, it’s exciting, it’s glamorous but it isn’t perfect,” adding that the company uses employees to vet alerts from the AI.