As if to keep up with the growing frequency and intensity of wildfires throughout California, a network of wildfire-spotting cameras grew from 35 stations last year to more than 300 as of late October.
The ALERTWildfire system co-developed by UC San Diego is one of several products created by the university that are improving the technological capability of western states to deal with wildfires now that the once-rare catastrophic events are becoming commonplace.
ALERTWildfire joins projects such as WIFIRE and UC San Diego research studies that consider everything from the geographic extent of respiratory health problems caused by wildfires to the tension between the government entities that pay for disasters and those that set building codes in high-fire danger zones. Now that worst-case scenarios appear to be a new mainstay for the foreseeable future, the focus is on minimizing the damage as early as possible.
“Every fire starts out small,” said Neal Driscoll, a geoscientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “If we can get on top of them in their incipient phase, we have the opportunity to stay on offense.”
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