Electronic Nose 'Smells' Wildfires for Ultra-Early Detection
Climate
Speaker 1: 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 Snet Suite, an AI wildfire detection system developed by Dryad Networks. We spoke to the co-founder and c e O 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 [00:00:30] of greenhouse gases as they burn to make matters worse, climate change is creating conditions that can make wildfires more frequent and destructive.
Speaker 2: I felt like this is really an error that needs a technological solution because it's us humans pausing 85% of fires, so it should be us stopping it.
Speaker 1: Here's how it works. Sensors are installed throughout the forest about three meters off the ground.
Speaker 2: Each sensor can protect the area of about one hectare, which is a football field size, like an electronic nose. It can smell [00:01:00] when there is a fire 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.
Speaker 1: The sensors are waterproof and use capacitors to store energy rather than lithium ion batteries that have some risk of catching fire themselves.
Speaker 2: We execute machine learning AI and in the sensor, so we train the models in the laboratory with actual small controlled fires, and then we create [00:01:30] a machine learning model from the gas that the sensor has smelled, and 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 an alert.
Speaker 1: 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 wifi signal in most forests, so Dryad Networks has had [00:02:00] to set about creating its own communication system to go along with its sensors.
Speaker 2: 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 there typically isn't any network.
Speaker 1: These networks operate at much lower frequencies and energy levels than modern cell phones or wireless internet phone networks.
Speaker 2: Mobile phones are typically now these days with L T E and much higher frequency [00:02:30] with much higher energy level. So yes, I can absolutely be certain that there is no negative impact on wildlife or biology in the forest,
Speaker 1: Dryads networks 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,
Speaker 2: The sensor is less than a hundred [00:03:00] dollars. Our customers typically are municipalities that need to protect the environment and the people living in proximity of the forests, but also power line 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 forest from the total destruction.
Speaker 1: Dryad also has future plans to use its networks for monitoring more than just forest fires.
Speaker 2: Effectively, we consider ourselves [00:03:30] to be something like the at and t of the forest. The fire detection sensor is the first application, a 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 there is a whole portfolio of applications that we want to develop. We're open for adapting sensors that are even not made by Dryad, but from third parties that could then participate and use our network.
Speaker 1: [00:04:00] 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.
Speaker 2: We've produced so far about 10,000 units. In order to detect real unwanted fires, we'll have to deploy more sensors. It has to be spread over a large area. Our vision is by 2030 to install 120 million sensors around the world, and that should have a substantial contribution in the protection of forests [00:04:30] and prevention of climate.
Speaker 1: As always, thanks so much for watching. I'm your host, Jesse Oral. See you next time with the fan.
