The Camp Fire in Northern California last month resulted in 88 civilian deaths and the destruction of nearly 19,000 structures, making it the worst wildfire in the state’s history. Skyler Ditchfield, chief executive of internet service provider GeoLinks, believes his Camarillo company and some nonprofit partners can devise a way to use data and technology to better detect and fight such costly natural disasters. With the University of California – San Diego and power companies, GeoLinks is deploying the first of what will be several hundred cameras and sensors powered by solar panels. “Had these been available in the Camp Fire, it would have radically reduced the time to notice of evacuations up there and saved a lot of lives,” Ditchfield said. The goal of the project that GeoLinks is part of is to have a statewide network of cameras and sensors at unmanned California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection lookout stations. Partnering with the company are AlertWildfire, a consortium of three universities in California, Nevada and Oregon, that provides the camera systems and software for first responders to access them; WiFire, an integrated system for wildfire analysis, developed by UC San Diego; and Cenic, a nonprofit operator of the California Research and Education Network, a computer network connecting schools and research facilities in all 58 California counties. “Everyone agreed that taking this to an ubiquitous coverage model across the entire state can make a radical impact on the way we not only respond to and detect fires initially, but how we deal with them in terms of situational awareness, live modeling and communications during those events,” Ditchfield explained. Public funding? The role of GeoLinks, which Ditchfield called the largest fixed wireless network builder and operator in California, is to build the data infrastructure and power systems for the fire monitoring sites in a self-healing mesh network. The self-healing aspect was needed because the lookout sites will be in areas exposed to fire, Ditchfield said. “No piece of the network will be reliant on a single other piece,” he added. The big question for this project, however, is how to fund it. Ditchfield said he hopes money will be made available in next year’s state budget. That may not be difficult considering that Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom has come out in support of using cameras in fighting wildfires. In June, Newsom wrote a letter to Geisha Williams, chief executive of PG&E Corp., complimenting the company on working with AlertWildfire to use cameras in the San Diego area and elsewhere to detect wildfires. “The efficacy of the San Diego system, and the cameras at Lake Tahoe, have shown that this UC San Diego/University of Nevada collaborative project can save lives, wildlife, habitats and property,” Newsom said in his letter. If funded by the state budget, Ditchfield said that just in terms of the firefighting costs, it would pay for itself in less than two years. “That’s not even layering in all the other costs associated with these major disasters in terms of loss of structures and loss of life,” he added. “You take that into account and it pays for itself in an exceedingly short timeframe.” The genesis of the project came from a conversation between Ditchfield and Louis Fox, chief executive of Cenic, back in March when GeoLinks received the Innovations in Networking Award for Corporate Partnership from the nonprofit. Ditchfield recalled that he told Fox they should pull in other groups such as WiFire with Cenic’s fiber backbone and GeoLinks’ wireless network to create a statewide model for fire detection. Fox agreed, and the invitations went out to put the team together, he said. “It has gained a lot of momentum since then,” Ditchfield added. Neal Driscoll, a professor of geology and geophysics at UC San Diego and co-leader of AlertWildfire, said the group was looking forward to working with GeoLinks on the camera network. Spreading network The network would start in California but could spread to other Western states, Driscoll said. “Our partnership with them is exciting and it will help us to get these instruments out quickly and effectively and utilize technology to better guide us in decision-making during disasters,” he added. The cameras that AlertWildfire provides will be placed at 400 Cal Fire lookout points throughout the state. They can be controlled remotely to tilt, pan and zoom. The cameras will be connected by GeoLinks to 1,600 rural fire stations to get the real-time information to them. “For them to get that data in real time where they have limited or no connectivity today, and giving them a significant data pipe back to the internet and back to UCSD provides a huge uptick in terms of what they can do in situational awareness and decision-making,” Ditchfield said. Driscoll has plenty of examples of how the cameras have assisted firefighters in the past. He described how on Nov. 12, a day of high winds and bone-dry conditions, a house caught fire in Ramona, northeast of San Diego and within minutes the fire department was able to verify it. Cory Costa, a fire captain in the Cal Fire San Diego Unit Emergency Command Center, called in an airtanker that dropped more than 10,000 gallons of water on the fire and kept it from spreading in the 40-mile-per-hour wind, Driscoll said. “Back in the old days, like with the 2003 Cedar Fire or 2007 Witch Fire, it would have burned right to the ocean, just like we watched with the Woolsey Fire in the same week,” Driscoll explained. In addition to firefighting, the wireless network that GeoLinks is designing aims to close the communication gap with the public. People do not realize that when firefighters are in rural areas and get far away from repeater stations, they lose communications with each other via their handheld radios, Ditchfield said. It can make a dangerous situation even more dangerous as teams of firefighters can be a ridge or two apart but not working in a coordinated effort, he added. “We wouldn’t send our soldiers out unable to communicate with one another fighting a war,” Ditchfield said. “These (firefighters) are basically fighting a war but not able to communicate with one another in these rural areas and coordinate their efforts together, which is a big detriment.” Year-round demand While not putting a dollar figure on what the company has spent so far, Ditchfield said it has invested in time to create awareness of the planned detection network among state lawmakers and in having engineers design the network. “Depending on how it gets funded, we may bring some financing to the table if that is needed,” he added. Additionally, the company has been in touch with the California Public Utilities Commission because of its interest in utilities having suffered equipment losses due to wildfires. Also, the California Office of Emergency Services wants to see earthquakes and mudslide sensors added to the lookout sites. However the system is eventually funded and the extend of its deployment, it will put California at the forefront of fighting fires with data and technology. It will have a growing market for the data it provides because, as both Ditchfield and Driscoll pointed out, wildfires in the state are now a year-round occurrence. “It is a massive uptick in terms of using data and technology and makes a substantial difference in the amount of damage (wildfires) cause on annual basis,” Ditchfield said.