Based at the University of California San Diego, ALERTCalifornia is a collaborative public safety program that provides the tools to prepare for, respond to, and recover from wildfires and other natural hazards. 

 

ALERTCalifornia is the third generation of UC San Diego’s High Performance Research & Education Network (HPWREN), and was built on the shoulders of more than 20 years of university research. Though this first-generation network was originally used for geologic monitoring, it quickly became apparent that the network provided useful tools to combat wildfires. In the early 2000s, HPWREN helped firefighters and emergency managers quickly communicate and coordinate efforts to combat and monitor major wildfires in San Diego County.

 

Over the next decade, emergency managers incorporated HPWREN’s publicly available cameras and wireless network into their response strategies. The infrastructure entered a period of rapid growth as the technology continued to improve. HPWREN eventually expanded into the ALERTWildfire consortium of universities in Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

 

Today, ALERTCalifornia is a state-focused program that manages more than 1,060 monitoring cameras and sensor arrays across California. ALERTCalifornia’s scientists are focused on natural hazard monitoring and research efforts. As a university-based program ALERTCalifornia is positioned to work with local, regional, state and federal government levels, utilities, and research institutions to meet state-specific needs and provide the data required to fill knowledge gaps and inform management decisions.

 

ALERTCalifornia prioritizes collaboration. Named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2023, ALERTCalifornia, CAL FIRE and industry partner DigitalPath collaboratively launched a novel fire detection AI tool that ushers in a new era of technology in wildfire prevention, detection, and response.