Advancing wildfire preparedness and response

We have all been watching in horror as wildfires level scores of acres in southern California, including neighborhoods many thought impervious to widespread fire devastation. Evacuations and power outages ravaged the Santa Cruz region in 2020, and future devastating wildfires in California are not just a possibility, but likely a certainty. Leading a school of engineering, I find hope in the promising work taking place to prepare for and counter these dangerous and destructive events. Baskin Engineers are developing advanced technology to detect the conditions that promote the spread of wildfire, technologies to measure their impact, particularly on our most vulnerable regions and communities, and technologies to help communities prepare for these inevitable disasters. 

Katia Obraczka and her doctoral student Andrea David are developing technology that will detect wildland fires. The system, P.A.N.T.H.E.R. (Persistent Autonomous Monitoring for Timely Detection of Wildfires), was described by KSBW News as “a network of wireless sensors that would be buried underground running through the forest, gathering and providing information through nodes.” Obraczka also serves as director of the UCSC office of CITRIS and the Banatao Institute. CITRIS and the Banatao Institute is home to CIDER (CITRIS Initiative for Drone Education and Research), which offers training and research support for the development and use of drone technology across all academic disciplines and many industry sectors, including wildfire management.

In addition to detection, technology is urgently needed to prevent wildfires. Using aviation, communication, sensing, and decision-making technology, Baskin Engineering Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and head of the CITRIS Aviation Initiative Ricardo Sanfelice and his team are engineering bold technological advances for wildfire prevention, prediction, management, and suppression. These technologies will improve the tools available to firefighters, helping them deploy their resources through ongoing information about environmental factors including wind speed and direction. Sanfelice’s goals extend to provide training curriculum and policy recommendations for the implementation of these technologies. 

The devastation of wildfires often hits our most vulnerable community members. Sensor technology being developed by Javier Gonzalez-Rocha, Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics at Baskin Engineering, is well-suited for understanding the dispersion of unhealthful fire ash into agricultural fields in a fire’s vicinity. With the support of UCSC’s Climate Justice Fellows Program, Gonzalez-Rocha has received a $100K seed grant from the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience. This funding will allow him to collaborate with Regeneración – Pajaro Valley Climate Justice, a community-based organization in Watsonville, to enhance air quality monitoring in the Pajaro Valley.

Another key element of wildfire management is community education and preparation. Baskin Engineering faculty who work in the area of Serious Games are developing interactive tools for wildfire preparedness, including Professor of Computational Media Katherine Isbister, who is an expert in human-computer interaction and game-user research, and Professor of Computational Media Sri Kurniawan, who is conducting research on how to train people to safely evacuate in threatening fire conditions, making the best decisions for personal property and transportation.

This work, and the work of our colleagues from across UC Santa Cruz, are positioning our institution to make important and life-saving contributions in our ongoing battle for wildfire preparedness and management in our region.