Can we use machine learning to help prevent, detect, control, mitigate and better recover from wildfires? Can AI, primed with data from multiple satellites and local sensor networks, detect fires earlier, predict fire behaviour, and help emergency services respond more effectively to protect homes, people and valuable natural capital? These are the big questions that teams of researchers will address in the 2020 Data Quest Challenge into Bushfires.

The team at DUG are excited to be partnering with Bushfire Data Quest and FDL for this year’s incredibly important research challenge. FDL Data Quest aims to push the frontiers of research and develop new tools to help solve some of the biggest challenges that humanity faces. Data Quest blends the expertise of academia and commercial partners to support rapid experimentation. This year’s challenge could not be closer to our hearts. As our planet warms, bushfires are an ever-increasing global problem. Indeed, Australia experienced one of the largest and most devastating fire emergencies this year.

Our DUG McCloud high performance compute resources and expertise will be used to support interdisciplinary research teams from space science, bushfire research, and AI/ML/data science as they work together to solve the bushfire research challenges. We look forward to working with some of the brightest PhD and post-doc researchers in Australia and New Zealand to help find solutions that may make a material difference.

The challenge will be held in August and nominations from interested PhD applicants are currently being taken. You can read more about the challenge here or apply to be on one of the teams here.