Helen Roush, Executive Vice President of Paperitalo Publications

In a recent announcement from NOAA Research, it states that the NOAA is testing next-generation wildfire detection and warning tools.

The article states that "Two experimental tools that will speed fire detection and warning got a week-long test run in NOAA's new Fire Weather Testbed in June during a series of hands-on simulations with National Weather Service fire weather forecasters, state wildfire managers, researchers, and social scientists.

The first, NOAA's Next Generation Fire System, or NGFS, uses artificial intelligence to rapidly and autonomously identify fires from observations made by geostationary satellites. By quickly communicating information to forecasters and land managers, it reduces response time when a swift initial attack is most critical.

The second, the application of the Integrated Warning Team paradigm to wildfire, speeds the exchange of information between meteorologists and land managers and fire agencies to issue fire warnings through NWS channels for rapidly spreading wildfires threatening life and property.

The tools and concepts we evaluated will turn our meteorologists into scientific first responders in partnership with fire, land and emergency agencies," said Todd Lindley, the NWS Science and Operations Officer for Norman, Oklahoma, who spearheaded the adaptation of the Integrated Warning Team concept to fire warnings. These tools will help us provide timely and life-saving warnings of particularly dangerous wildfires."

You can read the full article by clicking here.