Overview
Evacuationordersarriveaboutadaybeforeawildfiredoes.Thesatellitedatatowarnpeoplesooneralreadyexisted.Nobodyhadconnectedittothepeopleinthefire’spath.
0 hrs
earlier than official evacuation orders, at best
0 hrs
from satellite detection to alert
0%
of households have a fire safety plan
0M
people affected by wildfires, 1998–2017
The problem
A day’s notice isn’t much when your family is spread across a primary home, an elderly parent’s house and a rental. You need to know which place is at risk, not just that a fire exists.
The spread model
We built a vector-based spread model from scratch. When a new hotspot appears within two miles of a known fire, Ignis projects the movement 100 miles forward, sweeps a cone with a 40-mile base radius along it, and scores every saved address inside by how close it is to the fire.
What it does
Tiered alerts
Yellow, orange and red notifications based on proximity, within about two hours of satellite detection.
Every place you care about
Monitor your home, a parent’s house and a rental at once, each with its own live threat score.
AI safety plans
An assistant helps each family build, customize and share a plan for their specific property.
myCircle
Uses the Find My network to show family members’ locations relative to active fires.
Quarterly check-ins
Reminders to keep the plan current, because plans go stale quietly.
System
Outcome
Congressional App Challenge
Ignis won the Congressional App Challenge. It started as a high-school submission.
Recognized by NASA
Advanced further, with hardware added, and recognized by NASA at a UF Product Innovation Challenge.
My first “startup”
The first time I built something technically hard for real people, and it changed what I wanted to build next.