Four years ago, only a handful of AI-powered panoramic cameras scanned for wildfires in Colorado.
Next year, the network of cameras is poised to grow to more than 160 sites. Douglas County, Breckenridge and the Roaring Fork valley are recent additions to the camera network. Cameras are also being considered on Independence Pass.
Pano AI, a San Francisco company installing dozens of the cameras, has been busy this summer working to expand coverage from the Front Range to Routt County.
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The panoramic cameras are mounted on top of cell towers to survey large areas with high wildfire danger.
Utility companies like Xcel energy are emerging as some of the biggest customers.
Pano AI co-founder Arvind Satyam said last week new cameras being installed on Storm and Walton peaks near Steamboat Springs will be able to quickly detect blazes within a ten mile radius, and even further in favorable weather conditions.
“As soon as we do that, we then send that alert to a broad range of stakeholders via text and email, and they're able to see the fire start on a map,” Satyam said. “They're able to see the triangulated location. They're able to get powerful zoom imagery to see how that fire is evolving.”
He said humans help the cameras determine whether it’s really seeing smoke, or just a farmer kicking up dust.
The high-definition cameras operate at night and satellites can help confirm fire starts.
Firefighters around Colorado have been using the cameras in recent years to get a jump on blazes and put them out before they explode into costly emergencies.
In Douglas County, officials say a Pano-AI camera detected a blaze last summer before humans could see it.
It was contained at three acres after a quick response from a helicopter.
Satyam said the combination of the early detection and a quick firefighting response “fundamentally changed what could have been an incident that would go into hundreds, if not thousands of acres.”
“What we're doing is really providing the intelligence to keep a lot of these incidents down,” Satyam said. “There's a lot of incidents that don't make the news, because the stakeholders are able to get this capability.”
Other states, from Texas to the Pacific Northwest, are also embracing the technology.
A utility company in Oregon gave the public access to its network of 36 cameras this summer.
Washington state lawmakers also invested $2.5 million in the technology and launched a public camera portal last month.
Before the arrival of cameras in Colorado, firefighters more heavily relied on a combination of humans, aircraft and satellites to detect blazes.
State lawmakers have repeatedly sponsored bills to invest in the new AI cameras, but the efforts have repeatedly been snuffed out by competing priorities and, more recently, budget woes.
Satyam said each Pano AI site costs about $50,000 a year to operate and maintain.
“In order to really adequately cover this (wildfire risk), we need other stakeholders, the state, federal agencies also to cover around them,” Satyam said.
