The BetaKit Guide
Wildfire
Fighting Fire with Technology
Presented by
Photo courtesy of kellymlacy
By Isabelle Kirkwood and Darah Hansen
Design by Leanne Macaspac
Every summer, Canada burns. From Kelowna, British Columbia, to Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia, wildfires are growing faster, hotter, and harder to fight.
Canadian wildfire agencies spend between $800 million and $1.4 billion each year, a price tag that is compounded by insurance payouts, health care costs, and economic losses.
Abating the human and economic costs of this new reality is a national priority, and an opportunity for Canada to transform its experience into global leadership and opportunity.
Technology is not the only answer, but it is an element of the required response. New tools and approaches are being developed and deployed by Canadian startups, industry, and government, in tandem with the overdue incorporation of centuries of Indigenous knowledge.
As the scale and length of wildfire season continue to grow, Canadian startups and innovators are building technology to help us act earlier, move faster, and protect more ground.
By the numbers
2023 was a devastating year for Canadian wildfires, breaking records in scale, impact, and cost.
16.5M
Hectares of forest burned
200
Communities evacuated
640M
Metric tons of carbon released
440K
Hectares burned in a single day, on September 22, 2023
59%
Of all wildfires were ignited by lightning
12
Countries that sent firefighting support to Canada
Where there’s smoke
Deep Sky Research breaks down the amount of carbon dioxide released by the 2023 Canadian wildfires.
Data sourced from Environment and Climate Change Canada and Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.
Company spotlights
Across Canada, startups are developing tools and platforms to help detect, suppress, and adapt to wildfires. Companies are developing fire-proof construction materials, technology to reduce the number of wildfires started by power lines, and drones for just about everything.
CRWN.ai
Kelowna, British Columbia
The company focuses on early-stage intervention by identifying conditions that lead to failure before flames begin. With 100 devices already deployed and partnerships with major utility organizations, the company is refining predictions with lab-backed data.
BarrierTEK
Nisku, Alberta
BarrierTEK sees wood buildings as a box of matches. The startup has created treated wood products for housing construction that reduces the risk of high-intensity residential fires.
Alpha-EL
Whitehorse, Yukon
ALPHA-EL is building wildfire detection systems designed for the North, by the North. Headquartered in Whitehorse, Yukon, and Indigenous-owned, the company combines thermal imaging, computer vision, and satellite mapping with AI to detect wildfires before they spread.
Circular Industries
Victoria, British Columbia
Circular Industries is building unmanned aerial vehicle fleets designed to fight wildfires, and stop them from ever getting big. The drones handle prescribed burns and knock down early-stage fires fast. It’s a surgical approach to fire control that avoids blanket suppression and targets risk before it escalates.
FireSwarm Solutions
Squamish, British Columbia
When a wildfire tore through Gun Lake, BC, in 2023, Alex Deslauriers and Melanie Bitner founded FireSwarm Solutions to introduce autonomous, jet-engine, heavy-lift drones that can deliver water where it’s most needed. These modular drones can operate at night, coordinate in swarms, are truck-portable and fast to deploy.
Flash Forest
Toronto, Ontario
Launched in 2019 by Bryce Jones, Angelique Ahlström, and Cameron Jones, the startup plants trees using drones, AI, GIS mapping, and plant science. Instead of relying on manual tree-planting crews, Flash Forest’s drones fire seed pods directly into the soil—faster, cheaper, and in places humans can’t easily reach. The startup plans to plant one billion trees.
Ecosystem efforts
Addressing the cost and impact of wildfires is an all-hands-on-deck effort. From Big Tech to outer space and the halls of academia, efforts are being made to stop the spread of devastation.
The forest is wired
Rogers
As 5G networks have expanded across Canada, partnerships with telecoms are driving critical tech advancements in environmental protection and emergency response. To help detect wildfires in the forests of Alberta and BC, a partnership between Rogers and SenseNet has deployed 10 5G-powered cameras and sensors across 10 communities, including wildfire hot spots like Jasper and Grand Prairie, Alta.
Bee vigilant
Nectar
According to researchers with the Montréal-based technology company Nectar, smoke and poor air quality from wildfires are devastating the world’s population of honey bees. Its study used real-time data collected from more than 220,000 hives in Canada and the US to show the impact on these tiny environmental heroes, whose loss would send shockwaves through the entire food chain.
Wildfire is my major
Thompson Rivers University
Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops will launch Canada’s first comprehensive wildfire education centre in September, offering certificates and diplomas that blend cutting-edge technology with hands-on wildfire firefighting skills, advanced fire science, and Indigenous knowledge. Developed in partnership with the BC Wildfire Service, the program will expand to offer undergraduate and graduate degrees, meaning you can soon get a master’s in wildfire science.
Detection goes orbital
The Canadian Space Agency
The Canadian Space Agency is betting big on WildFireSat, a set of seven microsatellites expected to launch in 2029. The $72-million project will track fire behaviour across the country. The government estimates the satellites will save Canada up to $5 billion over five years by improving fire detection and monitoring, particularly in remote and northern regions.
Breaking the spread
Government of Yukon
The Yukon government is taking “groundbreaking” wildfire prevention literally, by digging a 20-kilometre-long permanent fuel break south of Whitehorse. Ten kilometres long and 45 percent complete, the barrier can already be seen on Google Earth. The $11-million project removes flammable spruce and pine trees, replacing them with fire-resistant species like aspen. So far, 168,000 seedlings have been planted, with 232,000 more planned this summer.
BigTech battles blazes
Google.org has convened AI Collaboratives: Wildfires, a collective of academic institutions, government agencies and companies using AI to prevent the devastating impact of wildfires. The team is tasked with developing smart tools to better track wildfires in real time, understand fire risks, promote controlled burns, and ultimately, protect communities from devastating blazes.
The Investment Landscape
Who funds the firebreak?
$408M
Invested in wildfire tech ventures globally in 2023
1
Venture capital firm in North America exclusively dedicated to wildfire tech
In June 2023, more than 900 wildfires were burning across Canada, filling the air with smoke and tinting the sky orange. By season’s end, 18 million hectares had burned in blazes spreading faster than crews could contain them.
But two years later, one thing is spreading far more slowly than wildfire: funding for the technology meant to stop it.
The Buyer’s Perspective
What the buyers of wildfire tech actually need
59%
of Canadian emergency service workers used pen and paper in 2024
As Senior Research Officer for the BC Wildfire Service, Natasha Broznitsky regularly meets with startups pitching high-tech solutions—from AI risk models to drone surveillance, water-delivery systems, nuanced GIS mapping, and wearable devices.
BC Wildfire already uses plenty of tech, including infrared scanning, night vision capabilities, and sophisticated software platforms. The team is currently field testing low-cost 5G-capable IoT weather sensors, developed in partnership with the University of British Columbia Okanagan.
But according to Broznitsky and other potential buyers of wildfire technology, innovators in this space often fail to see the forest for the trees.
Controlled burn
Where traditional knowledge and new technology meet on the frontlines of wildfire management.
25K
Indigenous community members evacuated during Canada’s 2023 wildfire season
18.9%
Indigenous community members living in zones with elevated wildfire risk
42%
Of wildfire evacuations involve Indigenous populations
For millennia, Indigenous Peoples around the world have understood fire as a force to be guided, and not an enemy.
To many Indigenous communities, fire is an ancient tool that shapes ecosystems, strengthens biodiversity, and—when used with care—prevents disaster before it begins.
Low-intensity, controlled burns have been used for millennia to clear underbrush, manage invasive species, and curb the risk of catastrophic wildfires. But laws enacted by Western colonial governments, such as Canada’s Indian Act of 1876 and provincial fire laws, suppressed and even criminalized traditional practices like cultural burns, forests grew dense, fuel accumulated, and wildfires became more extreme.
But Indigenous fire stewardship has reclaimed its rightful place in modern land management, and new technology is blending traditional knowledge with modern tools.
Controlled burn Q&A
“One key aspect for any technology moving forward is, what are you leaving behind for the community? Have you taught skills? Have you left individuals who can replicate that work? Have you created employment opportunities?”
Michael Martineau, Emergency Management Lead
Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations
Photo courtesy of RDNE Stock project via Pexels
The Insurance Landscape
To extinguish the cost of wildfires, insurance needs innovation
$3.1B
In insured losses from Canada’s 2023 wildfire season
220K
Canadian homes occupied in regions with high wildfire hazards by 2030
In spring 2016, Don Iveson became familiar with the smell of catastrophe.
He was Mayor of Edmonton at the time, and watched more than 20,000 people stream into his city after a wildfire forced the evacuation of Fort McMurray.
Inside a Red Cross shelter, he met a man who had escaped with only the clothes on his back, and who carried a sharp, acrid scent—the chemical stench of melted plastic, scorched paint, and vinyl siding from the burning city he’d just left behind.
The burning issue
Sarah Goodman, President & CEO, NorthX Climate Tech on wildfires, technology and the tools countries need.
What’s happening internationally
Canada isn’t alone in facing wildfire risks. Around the world, researchers, startups, and governments are developing tools to detect, predict, and respond to this global threat.
Space Lookouts
A research project led by the University of South Australia aims to detect bushfires from space by integrating AI software into tiny cube satellites that weigh just a few kilograms.
FireDome
Inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome, FireDome combines defence tactics with cutting-edge AI technology to offer “wildfire resiliency as-a-service.” These high-tech stations deploy protective barriers and extinguish spot fires inside.
Firefighting in a box
California-based Blaze Barrier has created the world’s first “fire barrier in a box.” Releases a non-toxic extinguishing powder that knocks down flames and creates a line of defence.
Amazon prime
São Paulo-based Mombak restores native vegetation on degraded Amazon land, which is vulnerable to wildfires.
Inflate. Fill. Fight.
Deploy Tech, a Welsh startup, makes flat-packed, inflatable concrete water tanks ideal for wildfire response where traditional water infrastructure is unavailable.
The hottest XPRIZE
XPRIZE Wildfire is an $11-million, four-year global competition launched in 2023 by the XPRIZE Foundation, headquartered in Culver City, California.
NorthX Climate Tech is backing breakthrough climate hard tech solutions, reshaping industries, building a world-leading sector, and creating enduring prosperity in Canada.