Autonomous AI firefighting drones taking on world's wildfire crisis

Spain suffered its worst wildfire season on EU record earlier this year as 40 blazes causes 30,000 evacuations with entire towns reduced to ash.

Fueled by a severe heatwave and drought exacerbated by climate change, damage in the northeastern 'Green Spain' of Galicia and Asturias was catastrophic, while fires also damaged big urban centers like the capital Madrid.

This winter the country is busily preparing for next season as firefighting officials increasingly look towards new tech to help save lives.

CGTN visited Madrid's Security and Emergency Agency control center which takes 11,000 calls a day and has a specific team dedicated to wildfires.

Satellite imaging and firefighting planes have long been used to fight fires. Now drones are increasingly being used.

Alfonso Fernández Arcones, Madrid's Regional Fire Services Manager, told CGTN Europe: "Our drone unit is absolutely crucial in combatting forest fires because this type of emergency occupies large geographical areas, so the drones allow us to cover a lot of territory.

"A long-distance video camera system will be operative in the near future too for early detection of fires from right here at the command post.

"Computer systems using AI are also improving a lot. They help predict the behavior of fires, once we establish fixed coordinates, then together with weather conditions, they can accurately predict the evolution of fires over the following hours."

World's worsening wildfires

Beyond Spain, an area half the size of Wales burned up across the EU earlier this year, while the Los Angeles fires caused unprecedented destruction and Canada lost an area greater than Germany's entire forest cover.

The UN confirmed the world passed the pre-industrial 1.5°C warming threshold in 2024, and experts insist this will turbo-charge future heatwaves and wildfires.

A new technological arms race in wildfire detection and extinction has already begun.

Dryad Networks is a company creating cutting-edge tech to fight forest fires.

Its CEO Carsten Brinkschulte said: "The vision really is to detect and extinguish a wildfire within 10 minutes from ignition and it's technically achievable.

"If you wait too long, you're facing an uphill battle, and it's often impossible to actually extinguish a fire, then we're facing one of those mega fires that we see on the news.

"We can put sensors into the forest. We can embed electronic noses that can detect the fire as early as the smoldering phase, we use embedded AI to detect the smell of a forest fire and distinguish that from a car driving by for example."

Automated drone systems are being built to respond to fire events detected by cameras or sensors or satellite. That means that AI sensors detect recently lit fires, alert autonomous water-carrying drones, which launch and fly to put the fire out within minutes.

Ninety percent of wildfires are started by human activity. It's a staggering statistic that devastating fires can be caused by arson, unattended campfires, discarded cigarettes, and vehicle sparks.

The 'Wildland-urban interface' is the term experts use for the area where human activity intersects with nature.

"We argue that this is the area to focus on," Brinkschulte added. "It's a surprisingly small area compared to the overall tree cover. 

"If you look at places like Canada, it's maybe 5 pecent of the tree cover that actually would classify as the wildland urban interface, and if we stop fires in these areas, we will stop a lot of destruction of property, nature and loss of life."

It's necessary innovation for our new age of climate adaptation.