What If… there was a challenge prize that would help us adapt to wildfires?

What if we could reduce the impact of wildfires on our communities, economy and environment through innovation?

Last week Europe began sweltering under another heatwave. As the UK reported record-breaking temperatures, an area twice as big as Paris was being consumed by a ‘mega-fire’ in France, and Spain was battling more than 30 wildfires. Yet again, the arrival of summer was marked by burning forests, charring houses, warping roads, and critical infrastructure exceeding its boiling point.

Countries around the globe find themselves in a difficult position of needing to cool down the planet by reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the face of a creeping energy crisis. Unfortunately, every blaze is making that job even harder. In fact, satellite imagery suggests that wildfires already release at least a quarter of GHGs, making wildfires both a consequence and a cause of escalating climate change.

As the climate becomes drier and hotter, wildfires become more frequent and their impact even more dire. Alongside lives lost and transformed, the EU spends nearly €31 billion annually on fire-protection services while the US valued their economic losses due to extreme weather and wildfires at over $350 billion over a decade. The pragmatic way to keep our communities safe and the economy healthy is to complement the emission mitigation efforts by adapting our communities to the impact of wildfires.  

We have a surplus of reasons pushing us to act. However, we currently lack enough incentives and support to explore novel ways of responding to the growing threat of wildfires. Innovative solutions – whether they employ the latest tech or harness traditional techniques – are also not scaling fast enough to match the escalating impact of wildfires. At Challenge Works, we have been dreaming up ways for challenge prizes to address that gap by enabling cities to convene stakeholders, critically assess their vulnerabilities, set bold goals and work closely with innovators to achieve them.

As we have witnessed, current methods of dealing with wildfires are labour and resource-intensive. We’ve been getting better at supersizing our suppression capacities – extinguishing larger fires by moving more fire retardants and people over longer distances, but ultimately this cost is unsustainable and the measures are a sticking plaster on a much bigger issue. Innovation could offer solutions to use less water, chemicals and fuel such as replacing airliners and helicopters with lighter vehicles and using autonomous systems to take the heat off firefighters on the ground. Some innovators go as far as experimenting with sound waves to extinguish fires, setting a new bar for thinking outside the box.

Let’s not forget that fire is a natural phenomenon crucial for maintaining a healthy ecosystem and excessive fire suppression leads to a build-up of material on the forest floor, sparking larger fires and fueling them for longer. This recipe for a ‘mega-fire’ calls for a more proportional approach like developing data-driven planning tools that foresee the path and severity of wildfires and help decide on the best long-term firefighting strategy. 

More importantly, we need to accelerate innovation across all stages of a wildfire lifecycle with diversified and integrated solutions. From using machine learning to become more accurate and precise at predicting fires to rapid response technologies to help monitor and reach epicentres faster. Finally, through prevention and adaptation, cities could employ the cutting edge in urban design, material science and smart integrated solutions to stop fires in their tracks before reaching key infrastructure. 

One can hope that we can avert the havoc wildfires cause on local communities and ensure that the next generations continue to look forward to the summer season.

If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, check out our Taming Wildfires Challenge Prize idea.