Australian scientists are getting closer to detecting bushfires in record time, thanks to cube satellites with onboard AI. Video supplied.
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00:11 Hi, I'm Dr. Stefan Pieters. I'm a senior lecturer in geospatial science at the University of South Australia.
00:19 So I'm part of a team working together with SmartSat CSC and colleagues from Springburn University on novel solutions for early fire and fire smoke detection.
00:31 So at the moment there are space-based solutions to detect fire from space,
00:38 using either geostationary satellites, which are very far from Earth, 34,000 km, or lower Earth observation, Earth-orbiting satellites, which are about 500 to 900 km from Earth.
00:54 But the challenge is early detection, because the geostationary satellites, although they can take imagery every 10 minutes, but the resolution is too coarse to detect small fires.
01:10 While the lower Earth observation satellites provide sophisticated resolution to detect smaller fires, but they are in orbit, so they are up to 6 to 8 hours between satellite's passing over a fire event.
01:26 And 6 hours is just way too long for getting a fire under control.
01:32 To overcome this challenge, we have developed an algorithm which allows on-board AI-based image processing on a CubeSat constellation system,
01:43 which ultimately allows us to detect fires 500 times faster compared to the need of the satellite orbiting towards the South Pole to then downlink the imagery and processes on the ground.
01:58 Ultimately, given a constellation of CubeSats, this would allow us to detect fires in less than an hour after they occur, compared to at the moment 6 to 8 hours.
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