AI-powered camera in Corral Canyon strengthens wildfire detection

By Barbara Burke · Thu Oct 01 2026

ALERTCalifornia expands Malibu-area monitoring as Microsoft commits $5 million to help identify fires sooner and give first responders more time to act

Dr. Neal Driscoll, founder of ALERTCalifornia at UC San Diego, believes he has found a better way to tip off residents and first responders about local fires after his organization recently installed an AI-powered camera on Corral Canyon using technology from Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab. “Our ALERTCalifornia cameras often beat 911 at informing first responders about a fire starting and such early notice helps in ensuring that fires don’t get out of control,” Driscoll said. “We now have a network consisting of nearly 1,300 cameras and sensor arrays across California and collect data that provides actionable, real-time information to inform public safety officials and residents. When the system detects a fire, it compares camera angles, verifies the location and sends an alert.” 

Driscoll explained that the system processes more than 7 million images daily, spotting a fire as early as 2.5 hours before the first 911 call, which provides first responders something they never have enough of: time.

Microsoft recently announced a grant with ALERTCalifornia to extend the entities’ partnership and expand the effort with potential to protect more communities. Microsoft is investing $5 million to support ALERTCalifornia’s work to detect and manage wildfires. 

One of the most powerful uses of AI is when it helps to prevent disasters, Driscoll noted as he stated that the cameras feed to Watch Duty and allow early detection of wildfires that can proactively mitigate outcomes for people, animals and ecosystems. ALERTCalifornia’s multidisciplinary team is based at UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering, Qualcomm Institute and Scripps Institute of Oceanography and works closely with partners across the state, including the California Department of Fire and Forestry (Cal Fire) and other federal, state and local agencies to ensure that emergency managers have access to the camera network, the AI and the latest technology that provides real-time data to inform responses. 

The cameras provide 360-degree images that AI can use to detect fires early

There are two local recent examples that illustrate how ALERTCalifornia cameras harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to aid in the early detection of wildfires and helped stop the fires in their incipient phases. On Aug. 17, firefighters stopped forward progress of the Yerba Fire near Yerba Buena Road and Mipolomol Road in the Santa Monica Mountains approximately 5 miles north of the Pacific Coast Highway just west of the Malibu city limits on the southeastern edge of Ventuary County, a fire that had prompted evacuation warnings in Malibu for residents along Yerba Buena and Deer Creek roads.  Secondly, the technology also empowered firefighters to quickly stop forward progress of the Kanan Fire near North Westlake Boulevard and East Kanan Road in the North Ranch area of Thousand Oaks. 

“What I want the people to know is that our high-definition cameras can pan, tilt, zoom and perform 360-degree sweeps approximately every two minutes with 12 high-definition frames per sweep,” Driscoll noted. “The cameras also provide 24-hour monitoring with near-infrared night vision capabilities which allows emergency managers to see fire through smoke and haze.” The  technology can also help support emergency managers during atmospheric rivers, storms, blizzards, landslides and other natural hazards, he added.

Forewarned is forearmed

All of ALERTCalifornia’s cameras are available to the public at cameras.alertcalifornia.org. They are also available in a few other places. Readers can view live feeds on the individual incident pages on Cal Fire’s Incident site (fire.ca.gov/incidents/), as well as the full camera network on WatchDuty’s website (app.watchduty.org/) and app. They can use cameras.alertcalifornia.org to see which cameras are in their area and they can also explore the time-lapse feature. 

As she stood on Corral Canyon observing the teams from ALERTCalifornia and Microsoft’s AI for Good install the camera, resident Bambi Young, who is involved in Arson Watch and in that neighborhood's Firewise community, noted that the camera will add to the tools available to first responders and residents as they attempt to detect, respond to andbattle wildfires and make key decisions involving evacuations and deploying firefighters and their assets, all with a goal of allowing first responders to arrive sooner and make the best possible decisions before a small fire evolves into a large crisis. “If you detect a fire early, you can stop it with a shovel,” Juan Lavista Ferres, vice president and chief data scientist at Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, observed. “If you wait, you’ll need a bulldozer, air tanker and maybe even a miracle."

What the future holds

“We want this technology to be available to people across the world,” said Lavista Ferres, noting that the long-term vision is to have a space-air-ground integrated network utilizing satellites and terrestrial networks and edge/cloud computing.