Can advanced fire modeling put out wildfires?

Splunk has ‘closed funding’ in Zonehaven, a cloud-based analytics application designed to help communities improve evacuations and reduce wildfire risk with data.

The funding is the first investment from Splunk’s newly launched Splunk Ventures social impact fund that champions data-driven approaches programmes that have social impact.

In 2018, more than 57,000 wildfires burned 8.8 million acres of land in the United States – although Splunk acknowledges that the problem is a global risk.

Despite this reality, fire departments still rely heavily on word-of-mouth, emergency calls and static ‘paper playbooks’ to detect wildfires and evacuate people at risk.

Zonehaven provides situational awareness and decision support by using what have been called ‘intelligent evacuation zones’ as well as advanced fire modeling, real-time weather data and always-on fire sensing capabilities.

“The increased spread of wildfires is a global emergency that impacts public health and the planet. While technology alone won’t eliminate fires, Zonehaven’s software can help communities prepare for evacuation, provide advance warning to those in harm’s way, preserve natural and economic resources and ultimately save lives,” said Charlie Crocker, CEO, Zonehaven.

Common data platform

Zonehaven’s technology presents a ‘common data platform’ for coordination and response to wildfires. The technology helps identify ignition points, projects simulated fire spread and develops fire-specific intelligent evacuation zones.

Splunk also used its annual .conf user event to detail Splunk Partner+ Program updates.

The company says it can count over 2,200 individual partner attendees at the show itself in the form of distributors, system integrators, service providers, original equipment manufacturers, technology alliance partners and value-added resellers.

Many of the partners build connectors, apps and add-ons to Splunk itself.

Splunk’s Big Data Beard team recently equipped an RV (recreational vehicle) with IoT sensors, built an edge-to-cloud computing environment and drove over 3,700 miles with stops in 13 cities on their Road Trip to .conf19.

Big Data Beard used Splunk throughout the journey to analyse their location, road quality, comfort levels and health data. Big Data Beard’s dashboards use Splunk Augmented Reality.

< class="wp-caption-text">Image: Zonehaven

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