XPRIZE Wildfire Teams Spot Fires Within 10 Minutes, but Neither Grand Prize Is Awarded
Finalists honored in the $11 million XPRIZE Wildfire competition demonstrated space-based fire detection and firefighting drones, but no team claimed either of the two grand prizes, Ars Technica reported.
The competition set two prize tracks. The First Prize track for space-based wildfire detection challenged teams to accurately detect all fires across a large swath of Australia within 10 minutes. A second track, the Autonomous Response Prize, asked teams to autonomously detect and put out a high-risk fire located somewhere within rural Alaska while ignoring decoy fires, all within 10 minutes of the fire igniting.
Ars Technica reported that the top teams spotted fires within 10 minutes but could not stop them.
Andrea Santy, program director of XPRIZE Wildfire, said in an interview with Ars that the aim was to give firefighters better tools. "We want to be able to prepare and provide tools for firefighters to really allow them to do the best job," Santy said. "They're great at what they do, but it's unfair to continue to put them in harm's way when there's technology coming online that can help keep them safe, keep communities safe, and protect ecosystems."
According to Ars, such technologies could prove helpful as the world grapples with the growing costs of worsening wildfire disasters.