Google’s wildfire detection is on the market in US, Mexico, Canada and components of Australia • TechCrunch

At an AI-focused press occasion at the moment in New York, Google introduced that it’s bringing its AI-powered wildfire detection system to the U.S. Canada, Mexico and components of Australia. It’s one in every of a number of “AI for good” efforts the corporate detailed this morning, which additionally included Google’s efforts to broaden flood forecasting to extra areas world wide.

The beforehand introduced system makes use of machine studying fashions educated on satellite tv for pc knowledge to trace fires in real-time and predict the way it will unfold. The characteristic is initially targeted on serving to first responders decide how greatest to manage the hearth.

This time final 12 months, Google introduced that the know-how was being added as a layer in Google Maps. The corporate famous on the time,

[W]e’re now bringing all of Google’s wildfire data collectively and launching it globally with a brand new layer on Google Maps. With the wildfire layer, you may get up-to-date particulars about a number of fires directly, permitting you to make fast, knowledgeable selections throughout occasions of emergency. Simply faucet on a hearth to see obtainable hyperlinks to sources from native governments, resembling emergency web sites, telephone numbers for assist and data, and evacuation particulars. When obtainable, you may as well see necessary particulars concerning the fireplace, resembling its containment, what number of acres have burned, and when all this data was final reported.

The characteristic joins an identical ML-based flood forecasting characteristic introduced again in 2018. That characteristic is now being expanded to an extra 18 international locations.