B2G: Government forestry agencies, fire departments.
B2B: Large managed forest estates, power transmission infrastructure in wildfire-prone areas.
Speed and reliability in wildfire alerts to enable rapid firefighting responses and reduce losses. Customers face wildfire risks threatening billions in assets.
Countries are shifting from response-focused to prevention-focused approaches. Global spending on detection/prevention is billions annually, growing at >10%.
Upstream component suppliers, downstream resellers, wildfire-alert service providers, government and enterprise customers.
*Blaze Scout delivers 95%+ cost savings compared to traditional ground-based solutions.
Optimized Spacing: 100 meters (Normal) to 50 meters (Single-line high-risk).
Density: ~100 devices per square kilometer (100-meter spacing).
Cost Efficiency: For a 100 sq. km forest, monthly cost is ~$10,000 (service model). In low-risk areas (400-500m spacing), cost drops to ~$500/month.
| Solution | Cost |
|---|---|
| Drones | 5,000 to 20,000 USD per Unit |
| Satellite | 10 million to 400 million USD per Unit |
| Lookout Tower | Up to 15,000 USD per Unit |
| Blaze Scout System | $80 USD per unit |
Competition: Manned/drone patrols, camera towers, remote-sensing satellites.
Weakness of Competitors: Delayed detection (hours), high weather sensitivity, blind spots.
Blaze Scout Strength: Alerts within minutes of ignition. Operates in extreme weather (rain, fog) via LoRaWAN.
Price Comparison: Competitors like Dryad cost $50-$100/unit. Blaze Scout retails at $80, but discounts to ~$48-64 for partners, offering superior reliability.
We target B2G and B2B markets through resellers (70%) and service providers (30%).
In the future, I could explore additional sensor suites for broader ecological monitoring (e.g., soil health, biodiversity) using the same sustainable power platform.
Forests are the most common type of terrain with abundant trees, but other terrains could also enable MPD power harvesting.
Trees and plants are common in urban environments, so another possible application is harvesting such energy for commercial uses.
Blaze Scout addresses the global crisis of forest fires through an autonomous monitoring system powered by a novel hybrid energy solution. Using the Metabolic Potential Difference (MPD) Energy from plant photosynthetic metabolism alongside solar energy, our design overcomes limitations of traditional power sources, especially unsustainable battery swapping regimes. Experimentation validated MPD's ability of providing consistent energy, while hardware design allowed real-time environmental sensing.
The hybrid energy solution generates 131 Joules per day, exceeding the 102 Joules consumed by sensors and LoRa communication per day, which enables a sustainable long-term operation, even under canopy cover, with a 22% energy buffer.
Blaze Scout reduces monitoring costs to only $80 USD per unit, a drastic reduction compared to existing solutions, making large-scale deployment economically feasible.
With scalable implementation, Blaze Scout could prevent dramatic amounts of wildfire loss, protecting forests, wildlife, and human communities while producing zero carbon emissions from its energy generation.
World's first implementation of plant metabolic energy (MPD) combined with solar power for wildfire detection, establishing a blueprint for sustainable forest monitoring.
Future work would optimize the resilience of the system and conduct field tests. While extreme-weather resilience is yet to be tested, this innovation establishes a blueprint:
Giving forests a scout for blazes utilizing the energy of their own ecosystems through Blaze Scout.