Artificial intelligence prevents forest fires, power outages

The American West has huge, green trees that grow near power lines, which can cause destructive wildfires.

In fact, 70% of power outages are caused by vegetation, and this has increased by 19% over the same period from 2009-2020. The second largest wildfire disaster in California history, the Dixie Fire, broke out when a power line came into contact with a fir tree.

In that context, Hitachi Energy Company in the US has launched a solution using artificial intelligence (AI) called Hitachi Vegetation Manager to deal with the risk of forest fires when trees grow.

Hitachi Energy uses AI to analyze trees to prevent wildfires. Photo: VentureBeat

Hitachi Energy announced, “This is the first closed-loop plant resource planning solution that uses analytic AI to improve the accuracy and efficiency of plant monitoring operations. vegetation management development planning efforts of organizations”.

The new solution, using algorithms, takes images of trees and forests from a variety of image sources, including photos, videos and images from commercial Maxar satellites.

By combining the images with climate, ecosystem and cutting plan data as well as machine learning algorithms. From there, Hitachi Vegetation Manager provides utilities with network-wide visibility and better insights so organizations can optimize decision-making.

“AI will analyze remote satellite images. From there, we can optimize and better plan to address areas of concern. This will also reduce costs and emissions. compared to field trips by truck, helicopter, and ultimately, reduce power outages and fires caused by vegetation,” said Hitachi Energy’s project manager.

Using AI to monitor and analyze vegetation is especially important for utility companies around the world, which are dealing with unprecedented climate-related challenges. In 2021, global wildfires generated an estimated total of 6,450 mega tons of CO2, or 148% more than the total fossil fuel emissions of the European Union (EU) 2020.

Hitachi Energy’s solution saves utility companies from needing growers to travel many kilometers around power lines to identify growing tree species that could threaten the grid.

Once the species data is fed into the model, the algorithm can take weather rainfall data, analyze the tree’s growth profile, and predict where growth will occur or not occur. .