Google is building the world's largest firewatch tower – about 100 miles tall. At Google I/O, CEO Sundar Pichai spotlighted FireSat, a project Google supports along with the Earth Fire Alliance to improve wildfire-spotting capabilities so blazes can be located and contained faster.
Existing early detection satellites can pick up fires that have grown to two to three acres in size (roughly two football fields). Using multispectral imaging and AI software to compare snapshots of a location with the previous 1,000 images of the area, FireSat will be able to detect flames "as small as 270 square feet, about the size of a one-car garage", said Pichai.
Currently, a single prototype FireSat satellite orbits the planet in low-Earth orbit, which Pichai said updates its imaging every 12 hours. When the constellation of 50 satellites is in place over the next few years, that frequency should be reduced to every 20 minutes.
"For those who live here in California and so many places around the world, so many of us know someone who has been affected by wildfires," said Pichai. "They can start suddenly and grow out of control in a matter of minutes. Speed and precision can make all the difference."
Google is far from the first company to use tech for spotting wildfires. From setting up AI cameras to spot smoke to using solar-powered sensors to detect blazes to "smelling" the electric noise made by fires, everyone from tech startups to telecoms have ideas about how to harness technology to make us safer from potentially dangerous infernos -- though Google may be the only one doing it from space.