What to Know
- Since 1994, XPrize has designed and launched 17 prizes.
- The first prize was $10 million for private spaceflight.
- Each prize had resulted in an industry-changing technology, according to the XPrize Foundation.
California’s governor is joining forces with the XPrize Foundation to launch a worldwide competition to find an automated way of detecting wildfires seconds after they spark.
“We have no idea what the solution is going to be,” entrepreneur Peter Diamandis said. “Let’s reinvent what has been an old form of fire suppression. Of people putting themselves in danger.”
Governor Gavin Newsom joined Diamandis on the stage and described the current emergency services system as antiquated.
“We’re still trying to get old-time cameras out there in the forest. We still have an analog 911 system in the state of California,” Newsom said adding that more than half of the 234 Cal Fire forest stations are more than 50 years old.
The governor warned that insurance companies are already hiking rates for homeowners due to the increased risk of wildfires.
“Instead of paying out after the fire, why don’t we use insurance to prevent the fire in the first place. Let’s flip that model,” Diamandis said.
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The XPrize competition, created by a group of philanthropists, entrepreneurs and others, has awarded more than $140 million over the years for what it calls audacious futuristic ideas aimed at protecting and improving the planet.
The California wildfire competition has not been launched just yet. Diamandis said he will work on a way to fund the prize that will be accept ideas from water cannons to drones to satellite sensors from anyone or any company around the world.
