SDG&E announces Fire Safe 3.0

SAN DIEGO – To adapt to the effects of the changing climate and threat of year-round wildfires, San Diego Gas & Electric is partnering with academia, government and public safety professionals to innovate and implement more advanced technologies designed to further improve wildfire safety in the region. Initial innovations include maximizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve situational awareness, a new Vegetation Risk Index and satellite enabled wildfire alerts.

SDG&E said the company plans to open a fire science and innovation lab next year to bring together leading thinkers and problem solvers in academia, government and the community to create forward-looking solutions to help prevent ignitions, mitigate the impacts of fires and help build a more resilient region. With this lab, SDG&E said the company aimed to lead the development of the next generation of fire science and wildfire innovation.

SDG&E’s deployment of the most highly concentrated network of weather stations and high definition cameras in the country, called Fire Safe 1.0, and the initial weather and fire models based on years of granular data, called Fire Safe 2.0, lay the foundation for the next generation of innovations, according to the energy company.

“SDG&E is proud to announce the new innovations associated with Fire Safe 3.0 and continue our collaboration with other regional leaders to improve community safety,” Scott Drury, president of San Diego Gas & Electric, said. “These advances, and the fire science and innovation lab opening next year reinforce our region’s leadership position in managing the risk of catastrophic wildfire. Most importantly, they make our communities safer.”

Additional advancements announced included artificial intelligence, satellite wildfire alerts, vegetation risk index and high-speed weather data.

AI-based predictive models will help increase accuracy of weather forecast, to help prevent power line caused wildfires and allow the company to further mitigate impacts to customers.

With the Vegetation Risk Index, SDG&E is analyzing data from hundreds of thousands of trees, historical power outages and historical weather data to help prevent tree-related outages and tree-related ignitions before they ever happen, reducing the risk of wildfires.

SDG&E is establishing the capability to identify and track wildfire activity from satellites in space, validating more precise wildfire location to help increase the safety of the electric infrastructure.

SDG&E’s weather stations network, the world’s first utility network of its kind, is being rebuilt, enabling the capability to provide reads on temperature, humidity and wind every 30 seconds, instead of every 10 minutes. This increase facilitates more precise, data-driven decision making to keep communities safe.

A new Wildfire Safety Community Advisory Council has been formed with a group of diverse local leaders from public safety, tribal government, business, nonprofit and academic organizations. The council will provide feedback and recommendations on how SDG&E can continue to help protect the region from wildfires.

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Submitted by San Diego Gas and Electric.