California Firefighters Use AI to Combat Growing Wildfire Threats

Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization (HWMO), a 25-year-old nonprofit, helps assess, evaluate, and deter a community's ignition vulnerabilities. Volunteers remove trees, haul waste, and help facilitate economic support for migration, retrofits, and more.

Burying electrical lines underground — a process called undergrounding — can prevent wildfires and mass power outages. Most of the country’s existing electric infrastructure is above ground and outdated, which is something cities at risk for wildfires are beginning to address.

Seville has implemented three innovative water-based cooling solutions—ancient Persian qanat technology, adiabatic cooling systems in 450+ schools, and urban evapotranspiration projects—that collectively reduce temperatures by 6-12°C in public spaces and buildings while using minimal energy and attracting international attention as replicable models for heat adaptation.

To address shade inequality and rising heat deaths, the American Forests launched a digital tool in 2021 that scores geographic areas based on tree canopy and surface temperature, as well as other factors such as income, employment, race, age and health. It then calculates a Tree Equity Score and maps out the regions that have the greatest need for trees. With this information, Tucson aims to plant one million trees by 2030, and has already planted 120,000 over the past four years.

Farmers are transitioning to precision agriculture to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The practice uses technology like artificial intelligence, satellite imagery, and soil probes to collect and analyze data so farmers know how to manage specific parts of their fields.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency monitors the air quality during wildfires to notify residents about whether it’s safe to go outside. The air quality alert system sends messages to residents in areas impacted by smoke to warn them of the conditions outside in an effort to prevent respiratory illnesses.

Several groups are emerging to help youth cope with eco-anxiety and the mental health effects caused by climate change. Groups like the Bay Area Youth Climate Summit educate and facilitate conversations about climate change with young people, helping them build a sense of community with others who share their concerns. Research shows those who participate in climate work and have a social support system have reduced feelings of eco-anxiety and depression linked to climate change.

The Potential Operational Delineations (PODs) framework combines analytics and local expertise to assess fire risk by marking out locations on a map where fire can best be stopped. The risk is then used to identify where best to suppress the fire and where it can continue to burn to benefit the environment and prevent future fires. From there, experts decide how to respond to a fire in each section of the map in advance, which can also include prevention tactics.

As airfare becomes increasingly expensive and oftentimes unreliable, several passengers are opting for train transportation, like The Overland. The Overland is an electric intercity railway that provides fast public transportation that reduces the need to rely on fossil fuels that power cars and planes.

The Office of Heat Response and Mitigation works to address the urban heat effect caused by intense summer temperatures. The Office has worked on several practices like coating streets and surfaces in light-colored, water-based asphalt treatments that reflect sunlight and absorb less heat than standard pavement. So far, 100 miles of residential roads have been covered in the treatment and roads with the treatment have an average surface temperature that is 10.5 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit lower than traditional asphalt.