Dryad Networks harnesses technology in forests to combat wildfires

Climate change — laced with research, politics, and economic impact — is a divisive issue across society. One of the most significant touch points in the climate debate is the increase in wildfires across the U.S. and around the globe. 

According to the North Carolina-based National Centers for Environmental Information, the month of October 2024 saw the most wildfires in October 2000, with a year total of 7,992,195 acres burned. And in a recent report, software and analysis company IMPLAN showed wildfires in California and Washington state alone could cost the U.S. more than $89 billion in lost output. In October 2023, the U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee found wildfires cost the nation between $394 billion and $892 billion each year in economic costs and damages.

According to Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, North and South America were affected most by wildfires and the subsequent carbon emissions. The largest wildfires started early in the season, which typically runs from May to November, in the Amazon rainforest. According to the CAMS website, Brazil and Venezuela recorded the highest wildfire carbon emissions on its dataset for February, after nearly 1,700 fire spots were detected in the Brazilian Roraima state alone, which counted for half the emissions of Brazil during that month.

In North America, the Smokehouse Creek fire, the largest on record in Texas history, burning more than 1.2 million acres, was recorded as the most costly. The fire, started in part by Xcel Energy’s infrastructure, burned for more than three weeks, and AgriLife economists estimated it led to more than $123 million in agriculture-related costs.

The financial and structural costs of increased wildfires in agriculture and other industries worldwide aren’t the only concerns. The health of the landscape and its inhabitants continue to raise the alarm. In a recent interview by Forbes, the American Lung Association’s national senior director for clean air advocacy, Will Barrett, said exposure to fine particle pollution in smoke can cause various health issues, such as asthma and heart attacks.

Wildfires have long existed as a natural part of forest landscapes, proving advantageous for reducing dead vegetation, stimulating new growth, and improving habitat for wildlife. However, the decreased allowance of logging and grazing in many areas of national forests, the prevalence of invasive grasses, continued dense tree growth, increased ambient temperatures, and drier drought conditions have made many wildfires catastrophic.

A study done by the Bartolome-Huntsinger lab at the University of California, Berkeley, College of Natural Resources, showed cattle grazing is an essential tool in reducing wildfire. The study evaluated how much fine fuel (grasses and other plants) is eaten by cattle on rangelands and how this may affect wildfire behavior. Flame length below four feet has been cited as a threshold allowing firefighters to safely fight a fire from the ground without heavy equipment. Keeping fine fuels at or below 800 pounds per acre generally keeps flame length below the critical threshold.

The study concludes that without grazing, hundreds to thousands of additional pounds per acre of fine fuels would lead to potentially more extensive and more severe fires.

Many solutions are in the works in North America and on other continents. Technology advancements in robotics work to decrease the number of casualties by deploying machines with resistance to heat and smoke while also working quicker than firefighters are able. Many machines are currently remote-controlled, but work on developing robots that can work independently is underway.

Training firefighters continue to be the backbone of successful firefighting operations but can prove as dangerous as actual fires. The span from 2008 to 2014 saw more than 100 firefighters killed during training. To help, 2020 saw the introduction and urgency of virtual reality simulations in training to mitigate risk to firefighters.

Another example of creating forward-thinking technologies is Dryad Networks, a four-year-old company that is focused on utilizing telecommunications to improve wildfire management. Carston Brinkschulte, Dryad’s CEO and co-founder, has a background in telecommunications, bringing 25 years of knowledge in the telecoms and supply industries and having been integral to three startups.

After selling those businesses to the likes of Blackberry, Tullio, and others, Brinkschulte said he had reached a point in his professional career where he was open to creating something personal and essential to him.

Among the most pivotal years for wildfires was 2018, with massive blazes in California and Australia, dubbed the Black Friday fires, along with considerable fires in the Amazon. At the same time, young people were speaking out about the destruction of the planet using a platform called the Fridays for Future movement in Europe. Children and teenagers were protesting and quitting school in acknowledgment and support of climate change, and Brinkschulte’s daughter was among them.

Brinkschulte noted this when his daughter brought the message home that we are not doing enough to protect this plant; he asked himself, “Why don’t we do something about this?”

It marked the beginning of what may appear as two seemingly separate areas of interest and expertise: telecommunications and wildfire suppression. And it became the basis for Brinkschulte to launch Dryad.

“Using telecoms technology to potentially address, or at least help with, the wildfire problems” was crucial, said Brinkschulte.

An investment of €20 million was made into the company to build a product using technology to mitigate wildfires. In addition to the cost these events have on people and property, they account for about 20 percent of global CO2 emissions — a considerable amount, similar to what the entire traffic population puts into the air.

This is both a driver and indicator of climate change, as more unusual and unnatural severe wildfires occur.

The current technology Dryad has in place focuses on human-induced wildfires, with this type of ignition origin accounting for about 85 percent of fires that start — usually due to reckless behavior, arson, technical faults, and accidents. To address these issues, Dryad decided to use the technology we use in our homes, such as fire detectors, outdoors.

The product Dryad developed and sells is the Silvanet Wildfire Sensor, a solar-powered gas sensor that can “smell” fires. While this isn’t a simple home fire detector, as it does contain artificial intelligence, it does achieve the same results.

Solar power technology can run for around 10 years and be attached to a tree or a pole in fire-risk areas. When a fire occurs in the area of the sensor, it will send an alert over a wireless network to notify authorities of the problem. A larger piece of equipment, the solar-powered network, also called the gateway, allows the sensors to communicate, even in areas without cellphone coverage. These gateways are placed every 2 miles, building a mesh network, as one sensor talks to another, expanding into a vast area.

The Silvanet Wildfire Sensor has been for sale for over a year, with 50 installations worldwide, with many in Greece, Spain, Portugal, and North America. Deployment is in place with Cal Fire in Jackson State Forest with several hundred sensors. Another California connection is working with the PG&E power company, which has pilots underway. Ten new installations in Canada are being run, and they are working with TELUS. This large mobile operator has deployed the product with power line companies along with the power companies’ infrastructure for added protection.

Another use is with the Canadian railway companies to protect bridges, wooden structures at a high risk of fire damage. So far, the technology has detected a few unwanted fires with over 20,000 sensors.

Dryad is now developing its next stage in wildfire response. With the current technology, the sensors and gateways detect fires early, with the ability to detect a campfire of a size or less. This size of a fire is easily contained if prompt action is taken.

“The idea came up of not just telling the firefighters that there is a fire, but what if we try to put it out? This leads to the idea of building a drone that tries to do that,” said Brinkschulte when explaining the new project.

Two years of concepts and technical studies brought the company to apply for grant funding in Europe from the European Union, which granted Dryad €3.8 million to take this concept from dream to reality. While there is no physical product yet, Brinkschulte anticipates that happening in one to two years. This time frame allows for the development of a drone that will fly to the sensor locations that detect a fire, take a look from above, show infrared videos and images, and then take the step to try and extinguish the fire.

Project Florian, as this drone project is titled, is not just the vision. “We’re actually working on it!” Brinkschulte added with enthusiasm.

The first test flights happened in early November with much work still to be done.

“We’re working on this concept to build an autonomous drone system that can respond to the fire alerts that our sensors are detecting,” Brinkshulte added. The intent is for the drones to be permanently positioned in hangars spread throughout the forest and to become activated automatically when the sensors were triggered.

Seeing Project Florian and the current sensor system successfully working in tandem not only serves to protect the environment but could potentially reduce the massive financial burden endured each year to control wildfires.

“From a financial perspective, if the system works as we envision, it could significantly reduce the burden on taxpayers because the system should not require any human intervention,” Brinkshulte said.

The company entered and is one of 19 remaining in the XPrize Wildfire Competition, a global future positive movement. This competition is a four-year long, $11 million competition incentivizing the innovation of firefighting technologies. The competition’s goal is to challenge the development of technology that detects fire and puts it out within 10 minutes with no intervention with $5 million available in prize money for the technology.

Brinkschulte — who’s company is looking to expand to a portfolio of soil moisture, growth, gas, and chainsaw detection sensors — notes that the forest is one of the few remaining areas without a large investment in IT technology.

“We want to digitize the forest and create useful applications that help to protect and restore the forest,” he said.

Tiffany Selchow lives on a working cattle ranch in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona. With a life entrenched in the Western lifestyle and agriculture, her goal is to share worthwhile, intriguing, and exciting stories of the rodeo world, ranchers and farmers, the outdoor lifestyle, and more.