of course, the question is, can technology help to get wildfires under control earlier? laura goodwin investigates. it only takes one spark to start a wildfire that can spread for miles and rage for days. with our climate changing and land becoming drier, it s providing the perfect conditions for wildfires to blaze. and even in traditionally cooler parts of the world, wildfires are becoming more unpredictable. mist and cloud are dominating the skyline today. but back in the summer, it was very different. it had been particularly dry and this piece of moorland in west calder, just outside of edinburgh, burned for three days. it took 60 firefighters and 12 appliances to eventually bring it under control.
rescue swimmers in distress? lj takes the plunge to find out. and then, from cold and wet to hot and dry, laura checks out the ai watching for wildfires. the alerts come through. i didn t even notice - that but the camera did. as cars get ever more powerful and ever more numerous, the quest for road safety is an ongoing battle. some cities, like london, have introduced congestion zones, which reduce the amount of traffic and make things safer for pedestrians. but there s also research, of course, going into how to protect the passengers inside the vehicles too. car safety testing is still largely done on the same crash test dummies that were used in the 1980s, and they were based on the male form. but now a team of engineers in sweden are in the final stages of developing the first average female crash test dummy. so what happens to a woman s body during a crash?
in which the tech has had to grow. across the world, different techniques are being employed from giant sprinklers in spain to infrared cameras in america. ai will have its place, but ultimately the aim is the same, to detect wildfires as quickly as possible and to protect the lives they threaten. that was laura, and that s all we ve got time for. yeah, thanks for watching, see you soon. bye bye. hello. there was a stormy end to wednesday low pressure sweeping rain and gales across the uk. as we move into thursday, though, we ll see some improvements, with some sunshine around. one or two showers, but it will stay quite wet in the south east
against danger and disaster. shona is in sweden to put the first average female crash test dummies through their paces. whoa! 0k! i m ready to be rescued right now! that looks chilly. it certainly does. but how could drones help rescue swimmers in distress? lj takes the plunge to find out. and then from cold and wet to hot and dry. laura checks out the ai watching for wildfires. the alert s come through. i didn t even notice that, but the camera did. as cars get ever more powerful and ever more numerous, the quest for road safety is an ongoing battle. some cities, like london, have introduced congestion zones, which reduce the amount of traffic and make things safer for pedestrians, but there s also research, of course, going into how to protect the passengers inside the vehicles too. car safety testing is still largely done on the same crash test dummies that we used in the 1980s, and they were based on the male form.
we train the ai using a lot of early stage wildfires and the ai, we ll run analytics on the images, to see if there is any fire like signal. the inherent risk of wildfires means this is a space in which the tech has had to grow. across the world, different techniques are being employed, from giant sprinklers in spain to infrared cameras in america. ai will have its place but, ultimately, the aim is the same to detect wildfires as quickly as possible and protect the lives they threaten. that was laura. and that s all we ve got time for. thanks for watching, see you soon. bye bye.