Twitterbot @WildfireSignal Helps Track Wildfires

#ChediskiFire #Chediski #AZfire; lat, lon: 34.150, -110.750 pic.twitter.com/iyaWHZppNc

— Wildfire Signal (@wildfiresignal) July 18, 2018

From MIT Technology Review:

The account, @WildfireSignal, will help authorities, aid organizations, and affected people monitor fires.

What it does: The tool, created by researchers at a startup called Descartes Labs, pulls the locations of active fires from a government database and takes photos of them using the GOES 16 satellite. A team is then able to collect and process the wildfire data in four minutes.

What it shares: The program builds a time-lapse record of the fire based on the satellite data and automatically shares it on Twitter every six hours, along with a hashtag specific to each blaze.

Read more and check out @wildfiresignal and Descartes Labs