UBC Okanagan hosted a BC government delegation for a site tour highlighting wildfire technology, research and prescribed fire training.
Cameras that can detect wildfires as soon as they ignite, sensors that track local weather data and person-to-person training on how to use fire to build resilience were on display for a BC government delegation at UBC Okanagan recently.
The visit comes as a recent Senate of Canada report identified wildfire as an existential challenge for the country. With the BC interior at the epicentre of Canadian wildfire, according to the report, UBC's Okanagan campus is in a unique position to lead the national development of the next generation of research, technologies and strategies that mitigate the risks.
"For many parts of Canada, wildfire is an increasingly common occurrence, even in regions that rarely, if ever, had seen it before," says Dr. Lesley Cormack, Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for UBC Okanagan, who hosted the demonstration. "For the Okanagan, fire has long been part of the natural cycle of the ecosystem. Extreme wildfire events are becoming more intense and widespread, however, and there is ever greater need for the leading expertise and direct experience of a top-tier university like UBC."
The delegation included Niki Sharma, Deputy Premier and Attorney General; Kelly Greene, Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness; Spencer Chandra Herbert, Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation; Rick Glumac, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence and New Technologies; and Darlene Rotchford, Parliamentary Secretary for Armed Forces Development and Veterans Affairs.
Students and researchers highlighted campus-led innovations, including an AI-powered wildfire camera network being developed with the BC Wildfire Service and a low-cost network of internet-connected sensors that refine local wildfire weather-risk forecasting.
They also showcased the Canadian Prescribed Fire Training Program, Canada's first national prescribed fire training initiative, which trains practitioners to restore fire resilience to the landscape and aligns directly with the Senate report findings.
"There are more than 30 researchers at UBC Okanagan working with partners across the province and the country to drive advances in wildfire mitigation and management," says Dr. Lael Parrott, Professor of Sustainability and Dean of the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science . "The urgent need for this work is growing every day due to the increased risks that communities are facing, not just in Canada but around the world."
Dr. Parrott pointed to collaborations such as those with BC Wildfire and the First Nations' Emergency Services Society of British Columbia as prime examples of how researchers and practitioners are combining Indigenous knowledge, cultural burning practices and the latest techniques to help communities across Canada learn to live with this new reality.
"We have built great momentum in this space, and wildfire resilience is now a core priority for UBC, but there are still considerable gaps that our campus is ideally positioned to fill," Dr. Parrott adds, pointing to investments like a dedicated Canadian wildfire research facility, high-performance computing to power the machine learning algorithms behind the sensor networks, and hands-on learning spaces for prescribed fire practitioners.
That momentum now has a next step.
UBC is designing a dedicated space on the Okanagan campus to house its wildfire research and training with the intention that it becomes a home for the kind of work highlighted in the demonstration.
Among the technology showcased was a province-wide network of wildfire-detection cameras being built with the BC Wildfire Service. Modelled on a similar network in California, the platform streams landscape views and uses computer-vision AI developed on campus to spot smoke early.
This public safety platform gives responders better situational awareness, enables faster decision-making and fewer costly smoke-chasing dispatches.
The delegation also saw the low-cost weather sensors developed by Dr. Mathieu Bourbonnais' Fire Ecology and Remote Sensing Lab. BC's weather station network is too sparse in many areas to capture wildfire risk that can vary sharply from one valley to the next.
This creates gaps that can lead to under-resourced initial attacks when risk is misjudged. The sensors pair locally relevant data with machine learning to close those gaps and sharpen wildfire-risk forecasts
Living with fire over the long-term also means restoring resilience to the landscape, and prescribed fire is central to that future. With the support of an $8-million donation from the Weston Family Foundation, UBC Okanagan's Prescribed Fire Training Program will equip practitioners across the country, including the Canadian Armed Forces, to plan and apply prescribed fire safely.
"For most of my career, much of the wildland fire community was focused on suppression," says Jane Park, the program's manager and a former wildland fire incident commander with Parks Canada. "More and more agencies now recognize that the right fire, in the right place, at the right time, is one of the best tools we have for making our forests and communities more resilient.
"This program, once fully developed, will give practitioners all across the country the training to plan and implement prescribed fire safely and well."
