Cloud-Based HPC and AI: Transforming Weather Modeling and Wildfire Analysis

In early 2018, NZO Cloud, a provider of custom High Performance Computing (HPC) and Big Data computing solutions, in collaboration with Atmospheric Data Solutions (ADS), partnered together to design, build, and implement custom High Performance Cloud on the cloud that could be used to assist utility companies as well as public and private agencies in predicting, mitigating, and managing risk from severe weather patterns. This cloud-based technology is absolutely critical in helping municipalities and government agencies predict and address wildfires like those experienced in 2020, which to date has resulted in the evacuation orders of over 500,000 in Oregon alone. NZO Cloud’s cloud-based High Performance Cloud can be used to analyze real-time data near wildfires, such as temperature, humidity, and wind speed, to help experts predict the movement patterns of the fire.

NZO Cloud is currently working with a number of large utility companies to quickly implement cloud-based high-performance computing solutions focused specifically on weather modeling and predicting potential wildfire paths. This powerful cloud-based computing combination of weather modeling and wildfire analysis has the potential to save lives.

Accurate severe weather and wildfire predictions require technologically advanced cloud-based high-performance computing servers and artificial intelligence (AI), and NZO Cloud has powerful custom solutions to help meet this need. NZO Cloud’s NZO Cloud weather solutions provide cutting-edge cloud-based hardware that efficiently processes large amounts of data needed to train complex AI models for valuable wildfire potential forecasts.

For example, a government website called the Santa Ana Wildfire Threat Index, developed in collaboration with a major southern California utility company, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), and ADS, forecasts short-term and long-term large wildfire potential. The Santa Ana Wildfire Threat Index site advises the USFS and the public on approaching wildfire potential events using forecasted weather and wildfire-centric variables, including dead and live fuel moisture, all of which are generated on NZO Cloud’s NZO Clouds.

This highly developed solution predicted large fire potential during the busy Santa Ana wind season, providing month-ahead and season-ahead forecasts that warned of above-normal Santa Ana winds this past fall. The public received forecasts and recommended actions well ahead of approaching critical fire weather. The utility agency used this advanced predictive technology to create forecasts to reduce the potential for accidental wildfire ignitions in their territories.