XPRIZE Wildfire Challenge

The $11M XPRIZE Wildfire is a 4-year competition to innovate firefighting technologies that will end destructive wildfires.

THE CHALLENGE

Globally, Extreme Wildfire Events (EWEs) are becoming more frequent. EWEs burn bigger, at a higher intensity, and can quickly sprawl out of control. While they represent only around 3% of all wildfires, EWEs account for 80% of total associated fire-damages and are increasingly contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions and worsening health impacts from pollutants.

These large and destructive wildfires wreak havoc on ecosystems worldwide, especially in the expanding Wildland-Urban Interface, where homes, businesses, and major infrastructure are most at risk, and where wildfire control and suppression activities are increasingly outperformed.

HOW TO WIN

In the Autonomous Wildfire Response track, teams have 10 minutes to autonomously detect and suppress a high-risk fire in a 1000 km2, environmentally challenging area, leaving any decoy fires untouched.

In the Space-Based Wildfire Detection & Intelligence track, teams will have one minute to accurately detect all fires across a landscape larger than entire states or countries, and 10 minutes to precisely characterize and report data with the least false positives to two ground stations.

The $1M Lockheed Martin Accurate Detection Intelligence Bonus Prize incentivizes innovations in accurate and precise detection of wildfires.