Weekly Wildfire Update: MT and ID Pop Off, OR and WA Both Have Monster Fires. AZ and NM Still Chasing Lightning Fires. Lockheed Martin Developing AI Virtual Reality Systems for IMTs.
Weekly Wildfire Update: MT and ID Pop Off, OR and WA Both Have Monster Fires. AZ and NM Still Chasing Lightning Fires. Lockheed Martin Developing AI Virtual Reality Systems for IMTs.
This whole thing about AI and drones dropping water might be “cool” or “interesting” but it doesn’t get down to the fundamental basics of putting fires out. The day 1 stuff of removing the vegetation and duff down to mineral soil, what actually stops a fire. It’s impossible to guarantee that you can stop a fire, in timbered fuel types, with water alone. Dry soils and duff being hydrophobic you would need an unfathomable amount of water drops to confidently call a section of line “secure.” It sounds like a complete and utter waste of money and resources relying on “technology” to do the job of subject matter experts. Now if they were to develop some sort of autonomous ground pounding machine that could dig to mineral soil, saw logs and brush and basically do the work of hand crews then maybe they would have a chance of successful implementation. But more importantly, I am beyond appalled that the USFS would bother to invest the time and money that one could speculate they are going to invest in this type of dystopian future of wildland fire versus paying the people actively doing this work in real time.
This whole thing about AI and drones dropping water might be “cool” or “interesting” but it doesn’t get down to the fundamental basics of putting fires out. The day 1 stuff of removing the vegetation and duff down to mineral soil, what actually stops a fire. It’s impossible to guarantee that you can stop a fire, in timbered fuel types, with water alone. Dry soils and duff being hydrophobic you would need an unfathomable amount of water drops to confidently call a section of line “secure.” It sounds like a complete and utter waste of money and resources relying on “technology” to do the job of subject matter experts. Now if they were to develop some sort of autonomous ground pounding machine that could dig to mineral soil, saw logs and brush and basically do the work of hand crews then maybe they would have a chance of successful implementation. But more importantly, I am beyond appalled that the USFS would bother to invest the time and money that one could speculate they are going to invest in this type of dystopian future of wildland fire versus paying the people actively doing this work in real time.
Leave the lightning fires in R3 alone...