Buying time: Inside the AI technology trained on B.C. wildfires
CTV
As frontline crews battled the worst wildfire season in B.C. history, a pilot project unfolded at a frantic pace at the BC Wildfire Service headquarters in Kamloops.
As frontline crews battled the worst wildfire season in B.C. history, a pilot project unfolded at a frantic pace at the BC Wildfire Service headquarters in Kamloops.
Supt. of Predictive Services Neal McLoughlin and his team spent much of 2023 implementing two artificial intelligence programs to analyze the Kamloops and Coastal Fire Centres and do work typically carried out by human analysts: taking data inputs around geographical conditions, weather forecasts, drought conditions, even detailed descriptions of the type of vegetation where new fires were sparking.
“(When done by people) a typical turn-around time would be anywhere from two to four hours for one fire simulation and you might get 14 in a day,” he said in an exclusive interview with CTV News. “Last year we were running probably 200 fires a day at minimum, and some of those fires would repeat and simulate a second time in a day when a new weather forecast came in.”
That means decision-makers don’t have to wait to assess what equipment and personnel should go where, which can make all the difference when responding to the kind of explosive wildfire growth B.C. saw last year.
As of March, the entire province has been under AI analysis at a time when the fire season has slowed due to cool wet weather in most areas. That’s allowed the team to pay close attention to a smaller number of fires in order to assess how well the parallel programs are predicting what happens when new fires start.
The Canadian software, FireCast, and American Wildfire Analyst typically provide similar results, but sometimes they provide conflicting forecasts for where and how fast a fire can spread. For the time being they’ll run both systems to compare results.
In recent years, persistent drought conditions and lightning storms have sparked hundreds of wildfires, some of which have destroyed infrastructure and homes.
Sea Bears centre Chad Posthumus has died at age 33.
Alberta’s government is poised to overhaul the province’s auto insurance system, with a no-fault model emerging as the most likely, offered to counter rising premiums.
Next week, Sudbury city council will decide how to rehabilitate the College Street underpass, which was built in 1949.
A Toronto-area woman who was defrauded out of $158,000 in a roofing scam over the summer received about half her money back following a tip from a CTV News viewer.
It's official — Quebec has set a new record for the most stolen vehicles recovered in one year by Canadian border agents.
Facing criticism for requiring health care workers with two jobs within the public system to choose one to comply with labour laws, Santé Québec has announced a one-year extension to the transition period.
The consortium responsible for building Ottawa's new north-south line, TransitNext, says it is ready for the City of Ottawa to begin the final phase of approvals before opening the line to the public.
Former Saskatchewan Party MLA Greg Lawrence has been sentenced to 12 months probation – after pleading guilty to one count of assault.
Several thousand British Columbians remain in the dark Wednesday morning after a windstorm known as a bomb cyclone slammed coastal communities.
A man who plead guilty to a double stabbing in 2015 will soon be out on statutory release, but he'll have to follow some strict conditions set out by the parole board.
A school bus hit parked vehicles and pushed one into a Middle Sackville, N.S., home Wednesday afternoon.