2024 Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize

Professor Michael Kosch’s pioneering research into artificial auroras and locating distant, ill-defined moving objects led to his development of advanced image processing techniques. In 2011, he joined spin-out company EnviroVision Solutions (EVS) who integrated these techniques into multiple large networks of automated and strategically positioned cameras, in a system called ForestWatch®. These have been used to rapidly detect, accurately geolocate and promptly report forest wildfires based on detecting smoke plumes up to 25 kilometres away. The physics-based detection relies on motion and spectral analysis using characteristics unique to smoke plumes, which also supresses multiple sources of false alarms.
 
Wildfires result in loss of life, property and crops, as well as billions in economic costs to prevent, mitigate and suppress the damage. Yet they are notoriously difficult to rapidly detect and accurately locate at the time of ignition, when countermeasures are most effective. The advanced image processing techniques developed by Kosch have allowed prompt reporting of smoke plumes even when the source of the wildfire is not visible, saving tens of thousands of hectares of commercial and indigenous forests and millions of tons of CO2 emissions.
 
Kosch’s company has deployed over 340 camera systems so far around the world, mainly in South Africa and North America but also in Ghana and Australia, with trials underway in Chile, China, Indonesia, Greece and Spain. These have substantially reduced commercial forest wildfire losses and their associated global CO2 emissions. Satellite burn-scar data demonstrates that in South African regions where ForestWatch was deployed, 120,000 ± 20,000 hectares of forest have been saved between 2014 and 2021. This equates to a total commercial saving of approximately £1 billion and CO2 reduction of 27 million tonnes, valued at £1.2 billion, in South Africa alone in the period 2014 to 2020. The economic burden due to wildfire is estimated to be £50 billion to £270 billion per annum in the USA. EVS USA has deployed 137 ForestWatch systems in North America, including Alberta, Saskatchewan, California and Oregon. In North America, it is estimated that ForestWatch systems have saved £1.6 billion in timber and 38 million tonnes of CO2, valued at £1.9 billion in the period 2014 to 2020.