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Would it be similar to that of a white paper? Or an actual demo. Or additional working detection hardware…
Under the past challenges, one mentions re-engineering a covid mask, so the end point is clear.
For this one, it feels much more open ended. Exciting, but I’m also quite curious, if anyone has an idea or examples.
On one hand this effort sounds like a good way to generate some interesting concepts. On the other hand, as a long-time resident of a rural, wildfire-prone area, it's also important to educate the public and politicians that there is a large body of proven land management best practices that can already significantly improve prevention, control and mitigation. While we can always do better, we often aren't sufficient…
On one hand this effort sounds like a good way to generate some interesting concepts. On the other hand, as a long-time resident of a rural, wildfire-prone area, it's also important to educate the public and politicians that there is a large body of proven land management best practices that can already significantly improve prevention, control and mitigation. While we can always do better, we often aren't sufficient…
It reminded me of the excerpt from the film 'Tending the Wild' about California natives where one argues one needs to learn to 'smell the smoke': https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=42&v=Z-EXQ9be8mE&feature=you...
To me, this is more of a predicament around what our human expectations are and how to appropriately live, especially if populations are desiring to build settlement structures in ways that create wildlife urban interface.
Best way to end destructive fires is to light destructive fires. The real purpose of fighting these fires seem to be protecting the logging industry.
The real problematic fires are currently man-made and entirely purposefully lit, i.e slash and burn agriculture. They are destroying the air and huge amounts of rainforest and jungle in places like Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Brazil, etc.
So while I commend the effort I think the bigger problem at hand is working out how to switch these agriculture systems over to more modern techniques and prevent further destruction of perhaps irreplaceable forests.
Most wildfires are generally in fire-prone areas where fires is a frequent and necessary part of life, detecting it sooner to save lives is good, developing better back-burning techniques to reduce intensity during fire season is also good. Just not as much impact on the world as aforementioned agricultural burning.
Even though we are at the tail end of the burning season in SEA you can still see how massive the problem is from this satelite detector run by NASA: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/
On one hand this effort sounds like a good way to generate some interesting concepts. On the other hand, as a long-time resident of a rural, wildfire-prone area, it's also important to educate the public and politicians that there is a large body of proven land management best practices that can already significantly improve prevention, control and mitigation. While we can always do better, we often aren't sufficient…
Wildfire suppression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildfire_suppression#Tactics History of wildfire suppression in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wildfire_suppressio... Controlled burn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn > A controlled or prescribed burn, also known as hazard reduction burning, [1] backfire, swailing, or a burn-off, [2] is a fire set intentionally for purposes…
We also widened the access road on our property to support larger fire trucks and dozers. Obviously, fire-resistant construction materials and techniques are a huge help and not all require extensive retrofitting. There are spark resistant attic air access covers which are easy to install. We needed to re-roof and remodel anyway so we went with fire-resistant roofing and concrete siding. It's also important to have non-cellular local communications because the cell towers often go out first (our community uses 2-meter handsets for emergency comms). Doing those things along with the fact we've cleared all trees and brush out beyond 300 feet and only have metal out-buildings caused our local fire chief to comment that if everyone did what we've done, protecting the whole region would be three times easier. We also have enough generator power (on auto-failover) to pump our own well water to wet down our house and surroundings. With that our house has a really strong probability of surviving with no external help even if our property is directly hit by a major wildfire.
Edit to Add: I forgot to mention another key thing. If you live in a place like this, there's often only a single narrow public road serving your property and others nearby. Make sure you have transportation that'll let you get out cross-country if the road is blocked by either fire or heavy equipment. We have AWD ATVs fueled and always ready to go (plus they are handy around big properties like this). Between us and our neighbors we have a plan to get everyone on our road out without outside help - including a few elderly folk who will need assistance. Firefighters needing to rescue unprepared residents diverts vital resources from fighting the fire and clogs roads - which just makes everything else worse.
For example, for low-frost areas of California -- which is about half the state currently (expanding all the time), we developed models for planting bananas and irrigating with recycled water, producing a profitable crop yield and providing a non-flammable barrier at the wildland-urban interface:
https://raghavan.usc.edu/papers/ediblefirebuffers-biorxiv21....
Best way to end destructive fires is to light destructive fires. The real purpose of fighting these fires seem to be protecting the logging industry.
The majority of the logging industry is a good thing for the planet. When you log sustainably, you take fixated carbon, turn it into a product that can be used, then allow the area to regrow, fixated more carbon as a building product. The vast majority of the time, it's a win-win. The negatives are supplying things like cheap paper to the post office for marketing departments to across to spam people using US Postal…
Best way to end destructive fires is to light destructive fires. The real purpose of fighting these fires seem to be protecting the logging industry.
There is very little focus on protecting logging and a lot of focus on protecting suburban sprawl. We live further and further into ecosystems that up until recently could have burned with minimal impact to humans. Now those same forests are full of cabin-mansions and summer homes of people who are rich enough for the system to care about them.
Best way to end destructive fires is to light destructive fires. The real purpose of fighting these fires seem to be protecting the logging industry.
Spoken like someone who hasn't had to spend weeks with off-the-charts smoke-based air quality problems, followed by hundreds of thousands of people having to replace air filters in houses and cars.