Wildfire Watch

WildfireWatch

AI-powered wildfire detection on public camera feeds

WildfireWatch.org is a free site to help fire & rescue professionals and members of the public detect wildfires using AI and existing public cameras.

How it works

There are 1537 public Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) cameras broadcasting across Washington State. We scan these images every five minutes, and apply an AI-powered filter that can detect wildfires, which is provided by Plainsight Technologies.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will you add more cameras?

Yes! We started in Washington because we live here. We have friends in the Department of Natural Resources who were struggling to get enough cameras online through other vendors. So, we decided to build this site free of charge.

How accurate is the AI model?

The model is very accurate at detecting fires with stereotypical visual signatures, and Plainsight is currently fine-tuning it on WSDOT-specific conditions such as roadways. Plainsight will constantly improve the model to reduce false positives and false negatives.

The model can rapidly analyze vast geographical areas, providing timely and precise detection with a temporal resolution of five minutes. We plan to publish specific accuracy data over time. For more information on our methodology or how the technology works, please visit plainsight.ai.

Where did you get the training data? How did you train the model?

The training data was sourced from the open internet and the model will be publicly available. The model architecture was based on CLIP, OpenAI’s, zero-shot classifier from weakly supervised internet data. The model was then trained and fine-tuned on a subset of internet data relevant to detecting wildfires.

Can I get alerted when there is a wildfire?

Once we’re happy with the accuracy of the model and we filter out the false alarms, we will add alerting capabilities. For now, you can subscribe on X (formerly Twitter) at @wildfirewatch.

Are you working with fire departments?

We have a few friends in the Department of Natural Resources and we are working informally with them. We want to ensure this service is useful for them and the public, so we are always seeking feedback. If it works, they will use it.

Who's paying for this?

Plainsight Technologies is supplying its Wildfire Watch Filter for free to run on images publicly availably via the Washington State Department of Transportation. This is a private & public sector collaboration with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources in order to help keep firefighters safer. Plainsight Technologies also covers the hosting and maintenance costs of this website.

Will you let other areas outside Washington use this technology?

Of course! We don’t want any barriers to applying AI to help detect and respond to wildfires anywhere in the world.

How can I get in touch with the team? How can I help?

Please fill out the form below or send mail to team@wildfirewatch.org. If you have ideas, concerns, images we can use for training the AI, or cameras you’d like us to add, don’t hesitate to reach out!