Our aim: A £10m prize fund for breakthrough data-driven and autonomous systems that can distinguish between useful fires and potentially devastating wildfires and action an appropriate response
From Australia to the Arctic, the world is seeing record-breaking fire seasons. Fires are essential to natural ecosystems and a millennia-old land management tool.
However, we have recently seen a rise in wildfires – unplanned and uncontrolled fires that threaten communities and ecosystems and disrupt economies.
The increasing intensity and duration of these fires are both a consequence and a cause of escalating climate change. It is estimated that wildfires in 2021 released 1.76 billion tonnes of carbon globally – 148% more than the EU’s fossil fuel emissions the year before.
In addition to climate change, the devastating scale of fires was enabled by unnecessary suppression of smaller fires. This lead to vegetation becoming denser and dryer and building up fuel for larger fires in the future.
As climate change fundamentally alters ecosystems, there is a growing need to shape technology development towards managing wildfires. This can be achieved by monitoring the risks, keeping fires under control and preventing them from escalating.
The next generation of wildfire management systems requires innovation on multiple fronts. A revolutionary enabler comes from monitoring real-time satellite and sensory data and feeding them into advanced prediction algorithms to understand wildfire risks.
Taking the most appropriate fire management response requires improving the prediction accuracy and widening the time window of opportunity to take action. A well-informed management strategy will drastically reduce the occurrence of wildfires to begin with.
In cases where fire suppression is necessary, the ideal response is to rapidly mobilise autonomous firefighting systems to reach the wildfire’s epicentre before it gets out of hand. What if it is too late for surgical intervention?
The second best option is to create cutting-edge fire suppression technology that is more cost-effective to deploy and better for the environment when used at scale. Currently, scaling-up wildfire response relies on chartering fuel-hungry cargo planes or helicopters to deliver water or chemical fire retardants. These all place firefighters in additional danger and are not sustainable going forward.
While tremendous progress has been made on all of those fronts, the one thing we desperately lack is successfully putting the pieces together. We need comprehensive, end-to-end solutions that are data-driven and can operate autonomously when the need arises.
In addition, it is vital to be able to distinguish between unnecessary fire suppression and preventing a disaster from happening. To make this a reality, the Challenge will bring firefighters together with innovators such as data scientists, robotics and AV experts. Leaders, planners and environmentalists will also engage in focusing on strategies tailored to regional needs and circumstances.
It’s impossible to fully appreciate the actual costs of wildfires on a global scale. It is much more than the costs of putting out flames. It includes decimating ecosystems, accelerating climate change, disrupting economies and lives lost to fires and air pollution.
By providing incentives today, we can avert future devastation, keep carbon safely locked away and save unimaginable amounts of resources and value.
The Taming Wildfires Challenge Prize focuses on developing revolutionary data-driven and autonomous systems that keep wildfires under control. Using fires as a natural land management tool but preventing them from escalating into wildfires of devastating proportions.
This prize idea is designed to be a conversation starter, so tell us what you think!
The best prize ideas are developed through extensive research and engagement with experts, stakeholders and people with lived experience of the problems they are focused on. We start with a first draft like the one above – then work to improve, refine and validate our thinking.
We’re particularly keen to have conversations about this idea with potential funders and organisations working in the field. Get in touch if you’re interested – or if you think you have a better idea – and we’ll schedule a call.
Challenge Works has put together a report shedding light on the role of challenge prizes in revitalising the UK Innovation Strategy.
Challenge prizes can complement grants, reduce risk in portfolios of government innovation investments, and can be particularly effective at stimulating near-market innovation targeting specific outcomes and private R&D investment.
Blog
Blog
News
Blog
