How Wildfire Data Dashboards Improve Fire Prediction and Evacuation | Shreya Saxena

When wildfire threatens your home, the questions get personal: What’s happening? What does it mean for me? What should I do? Shreya Saxena lived that uncertainty during the 2023 Okanagan wildfires in British Columbia. That experience led her to UBC Okanagan, where she helped build the interface for a real-time wildfire risk dashboard, working with Dr. Mathieu Bourbonnais and industry partner Rogers Communications. In this episode of Neal on Fire, Shreya shares what it takes to turn readings from 50+ field sensors into information that firefighters, researchers and the public can actually use. She explains why she pushed to split the dashboard into real-time and long-term views, why only five environmental factors made the cut, and why soil temperature, wind speed and wind direction are her top three. She also covers what AI and satellite imagery add to wildfire detection, and why better models don’t always mean better detection. Show Notes Guest: Shreya Saxena, AI Engineer at Lawdroid; former UBC Okanagan wildfire dashboard developer; satellite imagery researcher Key topics: -Living through the 2023 Okanagan evacuation and the information she wished she’d had -How the experience drew her into wildfire research at UBC Okanagan -A 50+ sensor network measuring soil temperature, soil moisture, humidity, wind speed and wind direction -Why sensors that burned in the 2023 fire kept transmitting valuable data -Designing for first responders: a 24-48 hour real-time page vs. a one-to-two-year analytical page -Why wildfire triggers come from combinations of conditions, not a single reading -Quality and density over a few expensive sensors -Separating conditions that could start a fire from evidence that a fire has started -Where AI helps most: camera and satellite detection, and why model hype can mislead -Combining ground sensors and satellite imagery to see before, during and after a fire, including fireweed regrowth -Measuring success by prescribed burns enabled, not just evacuations -Her hopes for the next five years: earlier evacuation alerts, AI and robots on the fireline, and better protection for wildlife and trees Key quote: “Being able to display data which is usable for first responders and people who are in a state of emergency is a completely different challenge.”