Wildfire is a wicked problem affecting many people with shared responsibility and accountability, each with their own constraints on viable solutions. Using the WKID Innovation framework, Founder Dr. Natasha Stavros brought innovation to wildfires. Dr. Stavros co-led a workshop at the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) affiliated with California Institute of Technology to bring together tech innovators, fire operators, policy makers, and scientists to discuss how to fire fires smarter.
Together this group made 4 recommendations for smarter firefighting as megafires menace the US:
- Better, more accessible fire technology – right now technology advancements are hard to fund due to the cross-agency mission of fire science and management
- Coordinating everyone and sharing data – there is a lot of data, but that data isn’t readily available for those who need it, when they need it
- Funding, with a role for private companies – innovation in fire management requires innovation in the business models used to fund wholistic fire management
- Building resilient communities – fire management includes wholistic management beyond a detection, tracking, and suppression approach
These recommendations made their way through the Whitehouse and congress, ultimately shaping policy.