New technology could help fight wildfires in Idaho

by CBS2 News Staff

Thu, September 22nd 2022, 12:37 AM UTC

A helicopter carries water on a longline to a wildfire near Salem, Ore., at sunset Friday, Sept. 9, 2022. Climate change is bringing drier conditions to the Pacific Northwest and that requires strategies that have been common in fire-prone California for the past decade or more, said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky)

FILE - Trees scorched by the Caldor Fire smolder in the Eldorado National Forest, Calif., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. The Biden administration wants to thin more forests and use prescribed burns to reduce catastrophic wildfires as climate changes makes blazes more intense. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

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A helicopter carries water on a longline to a wildfire near Salem, Ore., at sunset Friday, Sept. 9, 2022. Climate change is bringing drier conditions to the Pacific Northwest and that requires strategies that have been common in fire-prone California for the past decade or more, said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky)

BOISE, Idaho (CBS2) — A new way to fight wildfires might be available to first responders soon. In a release from T-Mobile, they have outlined a new technology they are developing in partnership with Pano Ai and Portland General Electric to deploy 5G connected cameras to aid in early detection.

This new AI-powered camera system will work to detect the early warning signs of wildfires, enabling emergency crews to respond early, before the fire spreads.

Pano AI – a participant of the 5G Open Innovation Lab, which T-Mobile cofounded – deploys ultra-high-definition cameras and its proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform to constantly scan for and identify wildfires in the very early stages. The massive bandwidth and far reach of T-Mobile’s 5G network allows Pano AI to gather extremely high-quality video in at-risk areas and send vast amounts of data to Pano AI’s command center in real-time, maximizing the effectiveness of its AI platform and spotting potentially dangerous situations quickly and reliably.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, nearly 60,000 wildfires burned more than seven million acres of land last year. Early detection can play a pivotal role in the fight against the increasing severity and frequency of wildfires in the US.

“We put the safety of our customers, employees, and communities first and this type of innovation allows us to do that by monitoring and detecting wildfires faster and more reliably than other methods,” said Larry Bekkedahl, senior vice president of Advanced Energy Delivery at Portland General Electric.

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