How AI is revolutionising how firefighters tackle blazes and saving lives; The Guardian, August 15, 2024

Selena Ross , The Guardian; How AI is revolutionising how firefighters tackle blazes and saving lives

"What’s more, all that data needs to be recrunched anew every day as the weather forecast changes.

Humans can do this. But AI seems to be able to do it better, digesting mammoth datasets to predict wildfires fairly accurately as much as a week or even 10 days before they start...

Technosylva’s work is part of a wave of new fire modelling around the world drawing on AI and grappling each project in a different way, with the same three factors: fuel, weather, ignition. Many are not yet operational, but their creators expect them to be in the next couple of years."

Verizon under fire for 'throttling' firefighters' data in California blaze; The Guardian, August 22, 2018

Olivia Solon, The Guardian; Verizon under fire for 'throttling' firefighters' data in California blaze

"Internet service providers (ISPs) are entitled to throttle people who use excessive amounts of data, depending on the terms of the individual plan. However, Verizon has a policy to remove restrictions if contacted in an emergency situations.

“We have done that many times, including for emergency personnel responding to these tragic fires. In this situation, we should have lifted the speed restriction when our customer reached out to us. This was a customer support mistake,” said the company in a statement published on Tuesday.

Harold Feld, from Public Knowledge, one of the organisations bringing the suit, said: “Companies need to be liable for their actions,” adding: “Verizon’s response of ‘I’m terribly sorry your state is burning down, let me sell you this new package’ is not good enough. We need rules to prevent it from happening in the first place.”"