Google rolls out new features to stay safe from forest fires

While the news cycle may make it seem like we are caught in a dumpster fire, for some states in the country, these flames are anything but metaphorical. This week, 15 different states were hit with dozens of massive, roaring forest fires that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres of land while putting tens of millions of people at risk. And obviously things are only going get worse from here.

Tech companies can’t really put out a roaring fire with digital intelligence alone, but some Silicon Valley startups has spent in recent years, tinkering with tools to find out where fires are and where they might go next. And now Google throws its hat into the ring: today the company ad plans to deploy what can only be described as a forest fire mapping network.

Using Google search to search for questions about a wildfire will not only face a series of news segments on the subject, but also a real-time map outlining the limits where this particular fire is raging. People who have Google MAPs installed on their phones can receive handy alerts letting them know if they are moving a little too close to an active fire and potentially safer paths to their destination.

The company released a fairly detailed report Medium Blog that gets into the nitty-gritty of how these maps are created, but the short version is just … satellites. Using data pulled from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s extensive network of satellites circling the globe, then overlaying it on the already massive cards compiled by Google Earth Engine, the company is able to track where the fire roars and estimate how far it could spread. As the company’s blog explains, NOAA satellites are designed to detect “hot spotsOn the surface of the Earth, which naturally includes forest fires.

As Yossi Matias, the vice president of engineering behind Google’s emergency and crisis response technology, describes in the company’s blog, it’s an idea that has been coming to his mind for about a decade. . In 2010, he was working at a Google campus in Haifa, Israel, when the country was hit by the worst forest fire he had never known. The epicenter of the blaze, on Mount Carmel, was barely a half-hour drive from where Matias and his team were seated. When they went online to find out what was going on – and if they were safe – the web found virtually no information other than “a few details confirming what we already knew – a big fire was unfolding outside. our door, “he writes.

This is what initially inspired him to push for more emergency response features in Google search, starting with SOS Alerts in 2017 to direct people to authoritative information during a natural disaster. Since then, the company has shifted to other forms of climate crisis control: using its mapping engine to predict where floods could hit or turn every Android device into a mini seismometer in order to better detect earthquakes.

According to Matias, this new fire forecasting feature has been around for about a year, first tested as a tool for first responders struggling with the brutal wave of the forest fires that hit California in 2019. After getting the nod from authorities in California and Colorado at the time, the company announced it would roll out boundary maps in Search and Maps later in the day.

With climate change pushing up temperatures around the world and triggering record fires of Australia at California to the Arctic this year alone, the feature should be of use to almost everyone.