Washington’s AI-powered wildfire detection programme

There are a great many concerns around artificial intelligence voiced by the public and state staffers, but few uses of the technology have gotten more immediate buy-in than Washington state’s use of AI to control wildfires and predict where wildfires are likely going to occur.

The Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR), in collaboration with various agencies including Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech), has implemented an AI-powered wildfire detection program to modernize fire situational awareness and response. It’s already operational and has gone from pilot to production over the last 18 months.

According to James Galvin, the lead for Washington’s AI and Emerging Tech Program: “States like Washington haven’t used rangers with binoculars for decades. Today, wildfire detection helps fill that gap with 30 high powered cameras on tall towers looking across the state, helping human operators in identifying potential wildfires. They’re using AI in these tools to more accurately identify what is genuinely wildfire smoke versus dust from a dust storm or low hanging clouds. They’re able to continually improve the algorithms. So, using AI, they’re able to really improve the quick identification of wildfires and have less false positives.”

With that information in hand, using a dashboard that coordinates the information by longitude and latitude, the state can deploy the personnel to extinguish the flames before they have the chance to spread. “It’s really about getting to those wildfires quicker, which ultimately reduces the costs of fighting the fire in manpower, resources, aircraft, as well as potential damage,” said Galvin.

In 2025, five more stations are planned to go operational, with plans to provide new features including additional AI-driven intelligence layers.

The state is building intelligence layers for jurisdictional boundaries, utility lines, historical sites, and more to further improve multiagency use of the data. The state started piloting this effort in 2023 and has increasingly added more AI analytics and map overlays, as well as increased the number of cameras. Cameras look at wildfires in the forest and also urban wildfires, like those that savaged the Los Angeles area at the beginning of 2025. That fire began with just a spark. The state is now putting up additional AI vision cameras on utility poles owned by Puget Sound Energy. Washington’s Galvin said, “If there is a spark, we want to be able to make sure that the information is shared and we’re able to respond.”