Forest Fires in Southern Chile

[feargle]

Today, referring to the recent spate of disastrous fires still affecting the BioBio region, Fernando Villegas proposed setting up a network of Drones to monitor high-risk areas.

Without doing the sums, I suspect that the expense, logistics and technical capabilities needed to implement such a system to cover large sectors of southern Chile 30/24/7 would be prohibitive, especially for a country that still relies on commercial cellphone coverage to provide emergency communications.

There is an alternative - satellite-based systems. The Copernicus Project already provides Global coverage, although it seems not to be addressed specifically to real-time forest fire detection.

An alternative, the FireSat Mission, being run in association with Google Research, looks more promising, and would use a new dedicated satellite LEO constellation with the aim of quickly detecting the onset of fires.

Can AI help firefighters manage wildfires? | FireSat

However, I suspect the “hay que” will remain just that - mere talk.
As usual here, once the media clamour dies down, nothing will change. Already the affected inhabitants of BioBio region are rebuilding their houses - in the same places, using the same material, ie Wood, that allowed the fires to burn whole barrios down so easily.

[hlf2888]

Zoom earth is pretty good. Am surprised Conaf is not allowing their system to be used by the public especially if almost surrounded by fires and need to find an escape route.

[feargle]

@hlf2888

Am surprised Conaf is not allowing their system to be used by the public especially if almost surrounded by fires and need to find an escape route.

Blame and lawsuits from the survivors is probably one reason. A lot of internet data comes from unverifiable sources, and if you read the small print of subscriber agreements, you find that they usually contain a lot of escape-responsibility clauses. And Zoom, etc won’t help if the cell tower has burnt down.

Prevention, ie suppressing fires as they start is the way to go, but that would require a paid subscription-based high-quality service, and afaik that isn’t available yet.

[feargle]

The real problem is the disinclination of the authorities to prevent construction in potentially hazardous areas for political reasons, as well as a public disregard for the environment.

As the attached map shows, its no coincidence that these fires occur in the more densely-populated wooded areas, and down the Ruta5, provoked by human activity, some of which is intentional, and some of which is ignorance, carelessness and bad “housekeeping”.