Our Crowdfunding Groups
FUEGO (Fire Urgency Estimator from Geosynchronous Orbit)-Now will take important steps to develop hardware, and use existing successful software to build a wildland fire early warning system by detection of smoke from the fire. A movie of our software in action is shown at https://youtu.be/-DI-M6ySM6k. We will build, deploy, and test one high-sensitivity remote camera powered by existing automated visual smoke detection software based on machine learning. After testing, we will begin to replicate this system throughout California. Please make a gift today to help us detect fires faster!
(http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/wildfire-deer.jpg)
California faces grave danger from increasing number of fires over the next fifty years. Areas in mid and northern California are becoming hotter, with drier fuels and damaged timber, and will be much more susceptible to wildfires. Over the next decades will we not only see the tragedy of loss of lives and property, and increased costs for all Californians (every Californian pays about $200 a year, on average, for fire damages in our state) -- we will also see a dramatic climb in our CO2 emissions. At present, our CO2 from wildfires is about 6% of California’s total contribution. As Californians wisely go greener to suppress fossil fuels, Californians will simultaneously witness more fires, and the release of stored up CO2 from tree combustion will become an even larger fraction of the California CO2 contribution. So we are facing grave dangers, and something must be done.
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/5/10/5173/htm
FUEGO-Now pilot project builds on the growing capacity of our team to detect, manage, and predict fire progression. We want to find fires very early. After a period of team capacity building, we have found significant places where UC Berkeley can help California. One of our first opportunities to help, which can be funded within this UCB Crowdfunding initiative, is to develop a prototype system for finding smoke automatically from fire towers. Now fire towers do not have people watching for fires, and a growing number of fire towers have internet-serviced cameras operating. But automated detection of smoke from fires is not implemented in these towers. FUEGO-Now has prototype software that can automatically detect discover smoke from these existing cameras -- now we want to build a prototype hardware system that will be much more effective than these cameras. Upon successful tweaking of the hardware prototype, we will replicate this system and extend to many more sites in California. Please make a gift today to help us with this pilot program - and be sure to share this project!
Messages from the FUEGO Team:
Tim Ball, President of Fireball (5 minute video)
Will, Berkeley BS, Graduate Student (2 minute video)
Nathan, University Graduate working at Berkeley (90 second video)
For your donation of $25 or more, you will receive an official SHOUT OUT Certificate on out Facebook Page. All donations are tax deductible.
For your donation you will receive an Official Contribution Thank you Letter signed by our team via email. All Donations are Tax Deductible.
For your donation you will receive a signed Thank you Certificate via email and a special Thank you Phone Call from Carl Pennypacker. All donations are tax deductible.
For your contribution you will receive a signed Thank you Letter, Certificate and web access to view our fire/smoke detection images via email. All donations are tax deductible.
For your tax deductible donation, you will received a Contribution Certificate and an Invitation to our "Coffee with a Cosmologist" reception. We will contact you with a list of possible times and dates. All donations are tax deductible.
For those who donate at this level we have arranged a private tour of Advanced Light Source (ALS) given by Michael J. Banda at LBL/UC Berkeley. The tour will be hosted after April 1, 2017. See https://als.lbl.gov/about/about-the-als/ for more information on ALS. All donations are tax deductible.
