Google opens its wildfire border tracker to 15 new countries, including Turkey

In recent years, forest fires have become more frequent and severe around the world, threatening both nature and human life. While this dangerous situation increases with climate change and human activities, innovations in technology offer promising solutions to prevent and control fires. Advanced monitoring systems, artificial intelligence-supported predictions and fire extinguishing technologies are opening the doors to a new era in the fight against this great enemy of nature. There are some features that Google offers to users in this context.

Using artificial intelligence, Google can show detailed wildfire edge tracking in Search and Maps and through location-based push notifications. The company has now expanded this tool to 15 countries in Europe and Africa. These countries Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Kenya, Monaco, Montenegro, Portugal, Rwanda, Slovenia, Spain ve Türkiye happened.

The company publicized this information through alerts and features that provide people near wildfires with information on how to stay safe.

Google’s AI-powered wildfire tracking model was trained on multiple data sources, including various satellite image datasets. Additionally, the wildfire model is validated by comparing it with its own model of fire scars, which are shapes determined after the fire is contained based on measurements from past wildfire events. Other AI models are being used to confirm the presence of fires, and together these provide more accurate and precise wildfire boundaries than using satellite imagery alone.

These wildfire boundaries were displayed in Search and Maps, and their information was made available through notifications. In the first week of July alone, up to 1.4 million people accessed forest fire information after wildfires broke out in Europe and Africa.

Wildfire boundary monitoring aims to be useful in the field for both native speakers and visitors who do not speak the local language. These notifications are based on user settings and their preferred language, giving travelers during the tourist season a way to get timely local information about wildfires in their own language.