Latest news with #firebreaks
TechCrunch
4 days ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
LGND wants to make ChatGPT for the Earth
The Earth is awash in data about itself. Every day, satellites capture around 100 terabytes of imagery. But making sense of it isn't always easy. Seemingly simple questions can be fiendishly complex to answer. Take this question that is of vital economic importance to California: How many fire breaks does the state have that might stop a wildfire in its tracks, and how have they changed since the last fire season? 'Originally, you'd have a person look at pictures. And that only scales so far,' Nathaniel Manning, co-founder and CEO of LGND, told TechCrunch. In recent years, neural networks have made it a bit easier, allowing machine learning experts and data scientists to train algorithms how to see fire breaks in satellite imagery. 'You probably sink, you know, couple hundred thousand dollars — if not multiple hundred thousand dollars — to try to create that data set, and it would only be able to do that one thing,' he said. LGND wants to slash those figures by an order of magnitude or more. 'We are not looking to replace people doing these things,' said Bruno Sánchez-Andrade Nuño, LGND's co-founder and chief scientist. 'We're looking to make them 10 times more efficient, one hundred times more efficient.' LGND recently raised a $9 million seed round led by Javelin Venture Partners, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. AENU, Clocktower Ventures, Coalition Operators, MCJ, Overture, Ridgeline, and Space Capital participated. A number of angel investors also joined, including Keyhole founder John Hanke, Ramp co-founder Karim Atiyeh, and Salesforce executive Suzanne DiBianca. Techcrunch event Save up to $475 on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $450 on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW The startup's core product is vector embeddings of geographic data. Today, most geographic information exists in either pixels or traditional vectors (points, lines, areas). They're flexible and easy to distribute and read, but interpreting that information requires either deep understanding of the space, some nontrivial amount of computing, or both. Geographic embeddings summarize spatial data in a way that makes it easier to find relationships between different points on Earth. 'Embeddings get you 90% of all the undifferentiated compute up front,' Nuño said. 'Embeddings are the universal, super-short summaries that embody 90% of the computation you have to do anyways.' Take the example of fire breaks. They might take the form of roads, rivers, or lakes. Each of them will appear differently on a map, but they all share certain characteristics. For one, pixels that make up an image of a fire break won't have any vegetation. Also, a fire break will have to be a certain minimum width, which often depends on how tall the vegetation is around it. Embeddings make it much easier to find places on a map that match those descriptions. LGND has built an enterprise app to help large companies answer questions involving spatial data along with an API which users with more specific needs can hit directly. Manning sees LGND's embeddings encouraging companies to query geospatial data in entirely new ways. Imagine an AI travel agent, he said. Users might ask it to find a short-term rental with three rooms that's close to good snorkeling. 'But also, I want to be on a white sand beach. I want to know that there's very little sea weed in February, when we're going to go, and maybe most importantly, at this time of booking, there's no construction happening within one kilometer of our of the house,' he said. Building traditional geospatial models to answer those questions would be time consuming for just one query, let alone all of them together. If LGND can succeed in delivering such a tool to the masses, or even just to people who use geospatial data for their jobs, it has the potential to take a bite out of a market valued near $400 billion. 'We're trying to be the Standard Oil for this data,' Manning said.
CBC
05-07-2025
- Business
- CBC
Three Yukon communities receive money to reduce risk of wildfire
The Yukon and federal government are spending $17 million over the next eight years to help reduce risk of wildfire in Whitehorse, Teslin and Haines Junction. The money will go toward building fire breaks and trimming trees.
BBC News
06-06-2025
- Climate
- BBC News
Wildfire prevention urged by London Fire Brigade after dry spring
Fire breaks should be introduced to open areas to prevent wildfires this summer, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) has is likely to be one of the driest on record, according to the Met Office, and landowners and councils are being asked to play their part to reduce the under half of the capital is considered to be green space, many of which lie next to homes and breaks can be created by removing grass or ploughing earth to exclude any flammable vegetation, forming a barrier that prevents the easy spread of flames. LFB's deputy commissioner Charlie Pugsley said grass fires could spread particularly rapidly, as seen in the capital as well as worldwide in California and South 2022, London experienced record-breaking temperatures and long periods of dry weather that resulted in some of the most severe wildfires the city has ever had. James St John Davis, from the City of London Corporation's natural environment board, said: "As custodians of some of London's most iconic open spaces, we manage complex landscapes that are often right next to people's homes where the threat of wildfire is very real."We reduce risk through seasonal grass cutting, natural fire breaks, and widespread staff training to respond swiftly, often before emergency crews arrive. This year we've also invested in three new fire fogging units to tackle contained fires, such as those caused by barbecues." Grass fires can be prevented by avoiding the use of disposable BBQs in parks and open spaces, ensuring cigarettes are put out completely and disposed of correctly, and taking rubbish home if no bins are can also help by maintaining their gardens by preventing them becoming overgrown.
