Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is to participate in the international XPRIZE Wildfire competition and will offer a unique solution to combat the devastating forest fires that have caused severe human and environmental damage during the last decade.
IAI’s solution involves the operation of two autonomous UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) synchronized with one another. The first aircraft serves as a detection plane equipped with an advanced electrooptical payload that scans the environment and can locate fires at a great distance. The payload’s specialty lies in its ability to image through smoke and accurately identify the source of the fire while this is still in its initial stages. The information gathered is automatically analyzed and transmitted to the second aircraft as a flight trajectory, allowing this aircraft to drop fire retardant material precisely on the heart of the fire, without human intervention.
In the last ten years, forest fires have caused enormous damage worldwide, estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars, due to the destruction of infrastructure, loss of income from tourism, and damage to agriculture. Significant ecological damage and the loss of many species have resulted from the burning of vast forested areas. For example, the fires that occurred in Australia in 2020 resulted in economic damage of some $100 billion and the destruction of approximately 46 million dunams of land. The fires also claimed the lives of hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands to evacuate their homes. Similarly, in Greece, fires in the following year resulted in the loss of 102 lives and the destruction of approximately 1 million dunams of crops.
Israel Aerospace Industries has been a global market leader in the field of UAVs and airborne systems for over forty years. The company recently participated in the European Union ResponDrone program, where it developed a situational awareness system for first responders. This system enables first responders on-site and in the remote-control center to easily operate many UAVs for varied tasks, including communications-relay, fire-detection, search, and rescue. Furthermore, the system simplifies and accelerates situation-assessment, information-sharing, decision-making, and management of the operation, while enabling coordination between the various rescue forces operating on the scene.
President and CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Mr. Boaz Levy: “Israel Aerospace Industries is proud to be participating in the XPRIZE Wildfire competition and will use its considerable knowledge accumulated from the military sphere to help save human life, safeguard the environment and specifically fight forest fires, and in everything connected with environmental protection. IAI leads both in defense and protecting the planet on which we live, for the benefit of the generations to come.”
