Spotting bushfires early with AI and Axis

Based in Hobart, Tasmania, Fire Foresight specializes in advanced AI-powered bushfire detection and management solutions. Their critical early warning system helps protect vast forests, preserve biodiversity, and reduce economic losses from fire damage. Fire Foresight’s mission is to safeguard communities and ecosystems with cutting-edge fire detection technology. They collaborate closely with forest managers, utility managers, asset managers, and professionals across forestry, agriculture, mining, and energy utilities to ensure fires are identified earlier and more accurately.

To achieve early fire detection, Fire Foresight operates a network of AI-driven cameras. These are deployed across existing bushfire lookout towers, combined with a cloud-based visualization platform. This setup delivers real-time alerts and actionable insights through a centralized dashboard, enabling quick decision-making for emergency management.Drawing upon AI-supported computer vision, Fire Foresight’s technology enhances early detection and response capabilities across various landscapes. This enables rapid identification of smoke signals and delivers real-time alerts and visual data, facilitating quicker interventions by fire and emergency services.

Thanks to the experience of its parent company, Indicium Dynamics, a Tasmanian leader in IoT technology for environmental monitoring, Fire Foresight’s technology stays connected in remote locations across Tasmania. Real-time data ensures that every fire alert is timely, precise, and actionable.For over four years, Indicium Dynamics and Fire Foresight have partnered with Sustainable Timber Tasmania to develop remote fire detection technology. Sustainable Timber Tasmania manages the state’s public production forests and is a key firefighting agency. Together, we have developed a ‘Digital Forest’ environmental monitoring solution to significantly improve Sustainable Timber Tasmania’s fire detection and response times, enhancing its operational capabilities. This has a significant impact on protecting people, property, and communities from bushfires.

The durability of the Axis camera range, even in harsh environments, was also crucial. AXIS Q6225, a heavy-duty PTZ camera with long-range infrared sensors, was particularly notable. Designed for wide and long-distance surveillance, AXIS Q6225 features a 31x optical zoom, built-in analytics, and additions like windscreen wipers to maintain clear vision.For Fire Foresight, AXIS Q6225 was ideal for deployment across Tasmania’s fire observation towers. The ease of integration allowed Fire Foresight to deploy cameras quickly, providing a 360° view of the landscape.

Fire Foresight’s ecosystem of Axis cameras provided a standard level of integration across all devices. This allowed the them to reuse the code developed to integrate its AI alert platform with the cameras, making Axis camera range simple and straightforward to integrate into Fire Foresight’s subsystems. Once deployed, Fire Foresight used the cameras settings to adjust the color profile to suit its AI models, resulting in consistent performance across all cameras.

With the cameras deployed and integrated, Fire Foresight’s AI platform can send instructions to each camera, orchestrating its movements, such as spin rate, zoom, and video streaming functions. Axis API integration allows Fire Foresight to instruct the cameras to pause and zoom in on specific coordinates, enabling the AI system to determine whether a potential fire alert should be escalated or continuously monitored.

Since deployment, the Axis cameras have withstood environmental factors like wind, rain, snow, and even lightning. The 31x optical zoom and infrared capabilities provide the detailed vision needed to spot fires over long distances and at night, essential for fire situational awareness and management.

With Axis cameras integrated into Fire Foresight’s AI platform, the company has spotted fires early and with high accuracy. During the 2024 fire season, Fire Foresight’s system triggered at least 50 calls to emergency services in response to active fires. These calls were often made by Fire Foresight up to 15 minutes before anyone else. Occasionally, Fire Foresight’s system spotted fires on lookout towers before human observers located on the same towers. In some cases, Fire Foresight’s system resulted in the only emergency call made in response to an active fire.

The speed and accuracy of the AI-powered system have given Sustainable Timber Tasmania confidence in the fire alerts and its network of Axis cameras. This helps improve confidence in managing fire-related risks to forestry assets and the surrounding natural environment.

The network has significantly advanced early fire detection and management capabilities. The solution has reduced the risk of fire damage on the Tasmanian public production forests managed by Sustainable Timber Tasmania, safeguarding commercial and ecological assets and the broader community. The use of AI-driven camera vision allows large and remote areas to be monitored with greater accuracy and safety since the solution collects and analyzes substantial amounts of data effortlessly, with the AI constantly training to enhance the accuracy in identifying fires before they spread, enabling rapid response.

Now that Fire Foresight’s AI alert system is seamlessly integrated with Axis cameras, there is scope for many more camera units to be added to the network. This would be an easy lift for the company, given that its platform is standardized to the camera specifications and capabilities, making expansion straightforward.

As Fire Foresight looks to extend and improve its fire alert system, it is examining new ways to use Axis ACAP open application platform to bring more data processing and analysis to the edge — within the cameras themselves — rather than streaming data back and forth between remote locations and control centers.

With more control and processing at the edge, Fire Foresight can reduce signal delays from network latency and increase the rotation of the cameras for a more consistent view of the surrounding area as it changes in real-time, making it easier to spot visual shifts in the environment with greater accuracy.

Additionally, the cameras’ durability enables Fire Foresight to maintain optimal service level agreements with its existing and prospective customers. This is important as the company works to build out its alert system network beyond Tasmania, to the Australian mainland and further afield to international markets. “We have customer engagements in Southeast Asia, Europe, South America, and the US and Canada, and we know we have a robust platform with the Axis cameras, and a trusted, reliable partner in Axis to help us tackle this challenge globally,” Vernon said.