AI bushfire-fighting tech platform debuts at AFAC

Firetrail, a cloud-based data and artifical intelligence (AI) platform for bushfire management and prevention, will have a premiere demonstration at AFAC.

Bushfires are devastatingly dynamic, and systems that support firefighting efforts often cannot move as quickly, encumbered by manual processes, outdated technology and human intuition-based decision-making. When the team at Australian technology company Kablamo witnessed the Black Summer of 2019-2020, they committed themselves to using their specialist knowledge to help in the fight against Australian bushfires.

Firetrail turns the data that informs Australia’s bushfire responses into a single source of actionable intelligence. This data is underpinned by a mapping system that stores information in layers, allowing users to toggle between different views to customise what they see: from roads and critical infrastructure details to weather prediction systems.

Kablamo recently built a cloud-native, bushfire risk assessment platform with the Victorian Government’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. The project was recently recognised by Amazon Web Services, awarded the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partners Award for Most Innovative AI and ML solution. The project was also recently awarded Best Tech Innovation at the 2021 Finder Innovation Awards and a Gold award from the DRIVENxDESIGN Awards Program. It is also a finalist in the 2021 CRN Impact Awards.

Firetrail is designed for bushfire analysts, fire scientists, incident controllers and operations managers; in future the same real-time information can be rolled out to front-line firefighters where they actually are so they and the firefighting management are best supported.

As a cloud-based system, Firetrail allows the many separate but connected authorities to access the same comprehensive data-set to make crucial decisions. Users can take a macro view of current fire situations, examine historical fires, or make data-informed sandbox predictions.

Firetrail is adaptable and ready to use for the bushfire season ahead, with plug-and-play functionality for existing fire prediction models.