Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “This Electronic Nose Can ‘Smell’ Wildfires for Ultra-Early Detection”.
If a tree catches fire in the forest and no one’s around to see how can First Responders prevent it from getting out of control, that’s what these solar powered gas sensors are designed to help with they’re part of The sylvanette Suite an AI Wildfire detection system developed By dryad networks, we spoke to the co-founder and CEO to learn about how it works, where they’re being deployed and why it matters. Let’S get into it. Wildfires not only destroy carbon capturing forests. They release a lot of greenhouse gases as they burn to make matters worse. Climate change is creating conditions that can make wildfires more frequent and destructive. I felt like this is really an error that needs a technological solution, because it’s us humans causing 85 percent of fires, so it should be us stopping it. Here’S how it works. Sensors are installed throughout the forest about three meters off the ground. Each sensor can protect the area of about one hectare which is a football field size like an electronic nose. It can smell where there is a fire and and often before there is an open flame. So we can detect the fire and it’s still very small, call the fire brigades and send them to the exact location to enable them to extinguish it. The sensors are waterproof and use capacitors to store energy rather than Lithium-ion batteries that have some risk of Catching Fire themselves. We execute machine learning, Ai and in the sensor, so we train the models in the library territory with actual small, controlled fires, and if we create a machine learning model from the gas that a sensor has smelled and we we transmit that over the air into the Sensor when the sensor in the wire, it smells the same thing again that it has been trained, for it then sends another word.
The company says its sensors can run maintenance free for up to 15 years and can detect fires earlier than methods commonly in use. Today, such as satellites and cameras, however, there isn’t exactly a reliable Wi-Fi signal in most forests, so dryad networks has had to set about creating its own communication system to go along with its sensors, we’re creating a solar powered mesh Network. This is a gateway that is installed every two kilometers or so into the forest, and it creates a Communications bubble to enable the sensors to communicate whether it typically isn’t any network.
These networks operate at much lower frequencies and energy levels than modern cell phones or wireless internet phone Networks. Mobile phones are typically now these days with LTE in much higher frequency with much higher energy levels. So, yes, I can absolutely be certain that there is no negative impact on Wildlife or biology in the forest.
Dryads networked devices have been deployed across 50 installations in Europe, including Spain, Greece and Portugal, as well as the United States, including a few hundred sensors in the Jackson demonstration forest in Northern California, which is used as a living laboratory by various researchers, scientists and Foresters. To test different strategies for Forest management, the center is less than a hundred dollars. Our customers typically are municipalities that need to protect the environment and the people living in proximity of the forests, but also Powerline companies and railroad companies that, with their assets, sometimes do initiate fires and have a liability issue to solve, and then, of course, private forestry, which Needs to protect the assets, the forests from the total Destruction dryad also has future plans to use its Network works for monitoring more than just forest fires effectively.
We consider ourselves to be something like the ATT of the forest. The fire detection sensor is the first application and very important one for us, but we are starting to work already on additional sensors for soil, moisture tree growth, subflow chainsaw detection, biodiversity monitoring, so that is a world portfolio of applications that we want to develop. We are open for adopting sensors that are even not made by dryad, but in third parties that could then participate and use our Network. For now. The company’s main challenge is scaling up production and getting its sensors deployed across wider areas so that it can deliver on its promise of ultra early forest fire detection.
We’Ve produced so far about 10 000 units in order to detect real unwanted fires, we’ll we’ll have to deploy more sensors. It has to be spread over a large area. Our vision is by 2030 to install the 120 million sensors around around the world and that should have a substantial contribution in the protection of forests and prevention of climate change. What do you think about these forest fire sensors? Let us know down in the comments, as always thanks so much for watching. I’M your host Jesse oral, see you next time with the fan. .