This fire that is currently burning California could have been prevented. I’m not talking about prevent forest fire by not smoking, put out fire when leaving the camp ground or bbq, don’t drive over dry grass … whatever the smokey the bear said below:
Only you can prevent wildfires
Always be careful with fire
Never play with matches or lighters
Always watch your campfire
Make sure your campfire is completely out before leaving it
What I am talking about is something bigger but very simple to install. Look at California coastal area, it’s all water, yeah I know salt water, we cannot drink or make good use of it, oh wait yes you can now by putting out the fire. No, I’m not talking about putting the fire now using helicopter and airplane to scoop up the water from the coast and bring it inland and dump it over the fire, that’s typical to put out the fire now. What I’m talking about is prevention, this could have been prevented here in California and every else in the world that have super high risk of fire.
Are you ready? here’s my simple idea and it is simple and possible. Why can’t pipes be connected from the coastal area that will be using to put out forest fire only, since it’s salt water. I’m not talking about pipes directly pump water into the forest to put out the fire as it happen, I’m talking about having a reservoir contain this water to put out the fire, pump it frequently as needed, and can be direct pump to put out the fire as well as needed. Many pipes can be installed, many pumps can be installed, many reservoir can be installed – so what’s the problem? oh cost too much money? so right now it cost $10 billion to restore the damage and it only cost $1 billion to install the fire extinguisher, cost effective? I think yes.
So where is AI (artificial intelligence) come in picture? well we have fire extinguisher every where now a day, especially in high rise apartments and business buildings including hotels and so on. Those fire extinguisher sprinkler system pretty effective, well kind of, if detect heat and then wallah water sprinkle everywhere, not so effective. So with the AI technology system we have today, we can easily program sensors from all over the dry forest grassy area to sniff out fire, program it to see and measure temperature in certain area that will potentially be dangerous or will ignites soon, to make prediction where the fire will spread on top of it knowing it is a fire in that area and direct the sprinkler system to start spraying the water not necessary directly at it, but the area surrounding it, you get the point, be smart. Program AI to be smart, don’t spray directly at the fire bu rather around it. If you spray water straight it, you will be using a lot of water and might run out and it already spread and you have little water left to extinguish the spread, so be smart, you will figure it out fire fighting people.
That’s just my take on the California fire issue. Knowing that California climate is dry and lots of dry grass trees and so on, and still the electrical infrastructure pretty old there still have hanging wire everywhere and it will spark and ignite fire, that’s a different story by the way.
Think about the cost of preventing and the cost of an aftermath of a fire. Would you spend $1 billion to have a good night sleep worry free? or take a risk $0 or $10 billion damage if it happens. Apparently as we already know, $1billion probably a good investment.