Key Takeaways
- The 2023 Los Angeles wildfires demonstrated the devastating impact of catastrophic fires on communities and the environment.
- Technological innovations can help prevent routine fires from turning into disasters, but their adoption is hindered by a fragmented system.
- The United States lacks a coherent system for advancing and scaling wildfire technology innovation, resulting in uneven progress and missed opportunities.
- A federal coordination entity dedicated to connecting innovators, funders, researchers, fire agencies, utilities, and communities could help strengthen the wildfire technology innovation pipeline.
- Effective innovation can lead to fewer evacuations, fewer neighborhoods lost, and fewer lives turned upside down.
Introduction to the Problem
A year ago, Los Angeles woke up to a red sky as a series of destructive fires raged throughout the city, forcing schools to close and families to flee their homes. The aftermath of the fires was devastating, with many communities displaced, public services strained, infrastructure damaged, and air quality worsened for millions. As the anniversary of the Palisades and Eaton fires approaches, it’s easy to assume that catastrophic fires are the new American reality. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. By leveraging technological innovations, we can create a future that avoids such devastation.
The Complexity of Wildfire Hazards
The 2023 Los Angeles fires highlighted the complexity of wildfire hazards, which are shaped by how we build, govern, and respond to fires. Millions of Americans live in the wildland-urban interface, where homes and flammable landscapes meet, but many of these communities lack the resources to prepare for major fires or recover from them. Hotter, drier weather driven by climate change is increasing the risk of longer fire seasons, making it even more challenging to manage wildfires. However, land managers, fire chiefs, technologists, and utilities agree that catastrophic fires are often the consequence of a fragmented system that struggles to adopt technological innovations.
Promising Technologies
Promising technologies already exist that could be used to combat wildfires, including satellites and sensors that can detect new ignitions in minutes, artificial intelligence models that can project fire spread in real-time, and drones that can map hazardous vegetation. These tools can’t eliminate wildfires, but they can reduce their destructive potential, leading to fewer evacuations, fewer neighborhoods lost, and fewer lives turned upside down. New building materials can also keep homes intact even when embers land on them. However, the question remains: why aren’t these technologies widely deployed?
Barriers to Adoption
The United States lacks a coherent system for advancing and scaling wildfire technology innovation, which is a significant barrier to adoption. Diverse actors, including federal and state fire and land management agencies, local fire districts, tribal governments, utilities, insurers, research institutions, and private companies, operate under different authorities, budgets, procurement rules, and data systems. Innovators who want to help often don’t know where to go, and philanthropies fund pilot programs but not adoption at scale. Fire agencies struggle to test or purchase new and unproven technologies, hindering the widespread adoption of promising technologies.
Examples of Effective Innovation
There are examples of effective innovation in other fields, such as the U.S. military’s Defense Innovation Unit, which identifies promising commercial technologies and helps the services field them within a year or two. The federal Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy identifies high-risk, high-reward technologies related to power generation, transmission, and storage. In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit created by the Central Intelligence Agency, uses a venture capital model to invest in commercial technologies needed by intelligence and national security agencies. These organizations didn’t invent every technology they advanced, but their success came from creating connective tissue between innovators, funders, researchers, and end-users.
A Call for National Coordination
Wildfire needs its own version of a federal coordination entity dedicated to connecting innovators, funders, researchers, fire agencies, utilities, and communities. As a neutral coordinator, such an entity could scan emerging technologies for broad situational awareness, establish shared standards to support interoperability, assist with testing and adoption to strengthen buy-in by end-users, help innovators and state and local agencies navigate procurement challenges, and provide targeted funding to accelerate deployment. This entity could also ensure that innovators and investors look beyond headline-grabbing fire-suppression tools and instead toward mitigation and prevention technologies that can save lives and money in the long run.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The anniversary of the L.A. wildfires is a reminder of what is at stake. Americans have transformed public risk systems before, in national security, earthquake preparedness, hurricane forecasting, and aviation safety, through coordination and smart investment. Wildfire should be next. By creating a federal coordination entity and leveraging technological innovations, we can reduce the destructive potential of wildfires and create a safer, more resilient future for communities at risk. It’s time to take action and make wildfire mitigation and prevention a national priority.