TAMPA, Fla. — Inside a downtown Tampa office, Rocio Freg Vitalle is showing us how new technology can help track wildfires.
Last year, firefighters in Northern California got vital information from the project, called TAGS or Target Acquisition and Guidance System.
“We told them you better go and deploy resources on the south end because the fire is going to jump the river,” said Vitalle, SkyTL’s founder and CEO.
TAGS, created by Tampa start-up SkyTL, uses artificial intelligence to coordinate data from drones, aircraft, and field crews.
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It gives firefighters a real-time map of the fire and where it’s going.
Maria Tirado is SkyTL’s Strategic Operations Manager.
“We are trying to solve a very important issue. And even if we can help with 5% of that issue, I think that’s going to make a huge difference,” Tirado said.
The technology wasn’t in place yet to help with the Palisades Fires in Southern California, but SkyTL is studying that data now as they work to fine-tune the system.
“Without the real-time data, the winds, the vegetation, is not good enough to be able to do this type of model,” Vitalle said.
NASA just awarded SkyTL a research contract to keep building a wildfire response system.
This comes with more and more wildfires happening in Florida.
“I think that sadly, it’s an issue that’s growing in more areas, and we need to be ready here in Florida because we’ve learned from other situations around the US,” Tirado said.
This system can also be used to help with other natural disasters like hurricanes and floods.
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