Google has made a new feature available for monitor forest fires in Italy and in 14 other countries in Europe and Africa. It is no coincidence that the company has decided to expand the function precisely in this period, given that the problem of forest fires is unfortunately a typical phenomenon in the summer season, as demonstrated by the case of the fires in Sardinia reported on Google Maps.
How Google Fire Tracking Works
Google’s fire monitoring system bases its operation onartificial intelligence and has been active since 2020 in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Australia. In these hours it has also been extended to the following countries: Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, ItalyKenya, Monaco, Montenegro, Portugal, Rwanda, Slovenia, Spain and Türkiye.
How does the algorithm that allows fire monitoring technically work? In essence, the artificial intelligence that is used to operate the system in question has been trained using various data sources, including various sets of satellite imagesThe model is also compared to another Google model that specializes in analyzing the signs of fires on the ground (such as the shapes that remain after the fire has been extinguished), using measurements from past fires for this purpose.
In addition, additional AI-based models are used to confirm the actual presence of fires, thus allowing the boundaries of forest fires to be delineated much more precisely than using satellite imagery alone.
How to see forest fires on Google Maps
The forest fire monitoring feature is particularly useful on Google Maps. In this way, in fact, it is possible to plan your trips avoiding potentially dangerous areas. For see forest fires on google maps in theory, you just need to set a route or move around the map in the usual way and, if there are fires, these will be reported via specific alerts and will also be highlighted on the map with pink spots and with the appearance of symbols representing the flames.
However, we invite you to make sure that the function in question is active in your case (in theory it should be by default). On theGoogle Maps App For mobile devices, tap the button Levels (the one represented by the two overlapping diamonds) and, if necessary, activate the button Forest fires. If you use the Google Maps Web Versioninstead, click on the button Levelsselect the item Other in the opened menu and possibly select the option Forest firesif it is not active.
