5 min
You all must have seen #PrayForAmazon all over the internet as the issue is much bigger than we can imagine. Spanning 9 countries — Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, Amazon rainforest is the largest tropical rainforest in the world, where the majority of the forest is contained within Brazil. The Amazon rainforest is also popularly known as the lungs of the planet and is believed to produce 20% of Earth’s oxygen.
Now, it has been over three weeks that thousands of fires are burning in Brazil, and most of them are in the Amazon forest, producing a tremendous amount of smoke that could be seen even from space.
While it is common in Brazil as every year the nation suffers wildfire, this time things have become far worse with more than 74,000 fires across Brazil and nearly 40,000 fires across the Amazon only this year. Also, this is the fastest rate of burning since record-keeping began, in 2013.
Data Is The New Weapon To Fight Wildfire
While people are questioning why the government couldn’t forecast the wildfire, even after knowing that it happens every single year, there are people who are thinking whether big data and artificial intelligence could be a helping hand in predicting and fighting wildfires. Data scientists are now considering working with the following points to analyse wildfire:- The most likely starting point and the time of the wildfire
- How the fire would spread and what would be the consequences.
- The type of vegetation: whether the vegetation in the area has the ability to force the fire to spread rapidly
- Whether there is any kind of combustible
- Weather conditions
- Past records of wildfire at that place, which would include the cause as well
Outlook
The nature of the Amazon wildfire is much more alarming than people can imagine. While companies and government were busy taking things to the internet rather than using technology as a weapon to fight the wildfire, the scenario could have been different. Data and AI over the years have played a vital role in filling some serious gaps and its role in emergency situations like wildfire is also becoming popular. And with new advances in the domain, with more and more data getting generated every year, these sought after tech could be used in forecasting massive Amazon wildfire.- Why AI is Eating Google Search’s Ad Revenue While Boosting Meta’s
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