University Partnerships
At ALERTWest our university partnerships are what truly sets us apart from other Situational Awareness Platforms and AI Wildfire Camera Detection companies. Our university partners help us foster local engagement and program support. But most importantly, these partnerships help enable cutting-edge research on wildfires and other hazards. Learn more about each of our current university partnerships below.
University of California San Diego
ALERTCalifornia
ALERTCalifornia is a collaborative public safety program based at UC San Diego that provides the tools to prepare for, respond to, and recover from wildfires and other natural hazards. The state-focused program manages more than 1,060 monitoring cameras and sensor arrays across California. Data from the ALERTCalifornia network inform public safety in real time and establish the foundation for advising future mitigation and state policies to enhance California’s resilience in a changing climate. Named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2023, ALERTCalifornia, CAL FIRE and industry partner DigitalPath, ALERTWest’s parent company, collaboratively launched a novel fire detection AI tool that ushers in a new era of technology in wildfire prevention, detection, and response. The value of this public-private partnership is the development of AI to aid firefighters, mitigate watchstander fatigue, reduce false positives, and confirm fire incidents in the incipient phase.
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
The Oregon Hazards Lab is a research lab within the University of Oregon’s Department of Earth Sciences.
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Our mission is to use science, technology, and community engagement to understand, detect, and mitigate multi-hazards within the Pacific Northwest. Our work advances knowledge of natural and human-caused hazards and the environment, it helps to protect the public, and it contributes to community-level resilience.
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Our vision is to develop the most advanced all-hazards, environmental, and ecosystem observing platform in the United States.
UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA RENO
The Nevada Seismological Laboratory is a state program based at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Our lab operates a state-wide microwave network that provides real-time data and situational awareness for natural hazards to the public, first responders, and emergency managers.
We deployed the first pan-tilt-zoon fire cameras in Lake Tahoe in 2013 launching ALERT Tahoe – a pilot program to deploy cameras and a microwave network in the region surrounding beautiful Lake Tahoe. This initial project was funded through our lab at UNR, the Tahoe Prosperity Center, the Eldorado National Forest, and the US Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. Soon thereafter, through a contract with the Nevada Bureau of Land Management, the network quickly grew eastward into northern Nevada where the US Bureau of Land Management Wildland Fire Camera Project was born. As of mid-2024, we operate 108 cameras throughout Nevada, greater Lake Tahoe, and southern Idaho as the ALERT Wildfire camera network.
Our goal is to provide the public with real-time, reliable information on natural hazards throughout the region to support more resilient communities.
