U.S. app provides immediate information about fires

When fires recently scorched an area of Los Angeles, residents took advantage of an app that offers instant information about the fire.

As VOA correspondent Michelle Quinn reports, the Watch Duty app is a virtual emergency operation center that delivers instant information, neighborhood after neighborhood, while an area experiences a crisis.

It currently provides services in 22 countries while it plans to expand services for other natural disasters such as storms, earthquakes and tsunamis.

As fires burned Los Angeles, residents and emergency crews needed information they could tap into immediately. The briefing related to evacuation zones, wind and smoke direction, as well as power outage areas and others.

Many of the people used the "Watch Duty" app, run by a team hundreds of miles away in Northern California.

The app provides residents with essential information about new fires, wind change and other concerns. The app should be understood as a virtual emergency operation center that provides instant information, neighborhood by neighborhood, while an area experiences a crisis.

"My emergency and my neighbor's, who lives over 400 meters away from me, are different. That's what happens with communities everywhere and that's why technology helps," Nike Russell, vice president of operations at Watch Duty, told VOA.

The information with local details of the Watch Duty app is one of the reasons why it is popular with its 7 million users, most of whom have recently downloaded it.

Its success is that technologies that harness AI provide residents and emergency teams with real-time information that is needed to fight natural disasters and survive them.

One of the partners of the "Watch Duty" app is "ALERTCalifornia" which is run by the University of California at San Diego. Its network of more than 1,000 cameras across the country, which use AI, often detect smoke from wildfires before people call emergency crews.

"Together we become the eyes and ears for information that we then share as public announcements on our platform," Russell said.

Another partner of Watch Duty is Maryland firm N5 Sensors. Its equipment placed on the ground detects smoke, heat and other signs for fires.

"These devices, which function as a human nose, detect smoke and various toxic contents in the air," said Watch Duty's Mr Russell.

The app provides services in 22 countries, mainly in the western part of the United States as plans are drawn up to expand the services. While attention has been mostly focused on fire detection, Watch Duty plans to investigate other natural disasters such as storms, tsunamis and tsunamis.

"We want to become an app that provides all the services, where people have a source in times of crisis that makes clear and accurate what's going on," Russell said.