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AI cameras help detect wildfires earlier in France
France’s firefighting services are using AI-assisted cameras to flag fires up to 20 km away and cut false alarms.
Wildfires across France, Spain and Portugal have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate, with losses in France including four firefighters killed and about 150 injured, BBC Business reports.
In France’s Gironde region, firefighter union leader Guillaume Millet said detection techniques have changed as cameras assisted by artificial intelligence replace human lookouts in watch towers through the summer.
Millet said the AI systems reduce false alarms by distinguishing smoke from dust and can detect fires up to 20 km away, with cameras installed by Midgard and other areas using start-up FireTracking.
FireTracking’s CEO Jean-Simon Chaudier said the system sends alerts to firefighters’ phones with a live view, a map showing the fire’s location and nearby homes, and a weather-based spread simulation, adding that AI identified some fires about 15 minutes before the first phone call and that saving time can mean the difference between a limited blaze and a larger catastrophe.