VIDEO: Oklahoma firefighters are using AI to detect wildfires and respond faster. Several 360-degree rotating cameras are installed throughout Cleveland County by Pano AI.
“As soon as they spot fire, the alert is instantly routed to our human intelligence center, where that’s validated and then sent directly to the fire agencies and any utility partners that might need that, that information,” said Ben Hanson, vice president of sales, Pano AI.
With the alert, firefighters are provided a map of where the smoke is coming from and a live feed of the situation. “Our assistant chiefs can be watching this and live time and say, hey, this is just a little fire, and no, this is really growing, this is big. We need a lot more resources headed to this location,” said Joel Chesser, deputy chief, Norman Fire Department.
In a state where wind can push flames fast, Chesser says timing is everything. “Everybody’s familiar with the stuff that happened in Woodward last week, and you saw how quickly fire moves. The faster that we can get resources there and get that water on the fire, you know, it slows stuff down this time of year with the wind blowing in Oklahoma like it is. We’ve got to get there quick, and we’ve got to start making some headway, or these things can get out of control very fast,” said Chesser.
Chesser says this technology is especially helpful in rural areas and at night, when fires can go unnoticed. “At night, we had a hay bale fire. It was in a field. It did not get reported through the 911 dispatch by somebody until around 4 a.m., when we were able to look at the Pano camera, it actually detected this fire an hour and a half earlier,” said Chesser.