WildfireVLM: AI-powered Analysis for Early Wildfire Detection and Risk Assessment Using Satellite Imagery

TL;DR

WildfireVLM is an AI framework that combines satellite imagery detection with language-driven risk assessment to enable real-time wildfire monitoring and response prioritization.

Contribution

It introduces a multimodal AI system integrating satellite wildfire detection with language models for contextual risk analysis and decision support.

Findings

Achieved accurate detection of fire zones and smoke plumes in satellite images.

Demonstrated effective risk assessment and response prioritization using language models.

Deployed a real-time wildfire monitoring system with visual dashboards.

Abstract

Wildfires are a growing threat to ecosystems, human lives, and infrastructure, with their frequency and intensity rising due to climate change and human activities. Early detection is critical, yet satellite-based monitoring remains challenging due to faint smoke signals, dynamic weather conditions, and the need for real-time analysis over large areas. We introduce WildfireVLM, an AI framework that combines satellite imagery wildfire detection with language-driven risk assessment. We construct a labeled wildfire and smoke dataset using imagery from Landsat-8/9, GOES-16, and other publicly available Earth observation sources, including harmonized products with aligned spectral bands. WildfireVLM employs YOLOv12 to detect fire zones and smoke plumes, leveraging its ability to detect small, complex patterns in satellite imagery. We integrate Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) that convert detection outputs into contextualized risk assessments and prioritized response recommendations for disaster management. We validate the quality of risk reasoning using an LLM-as-judge evaluation with a shared rubric. The system is deployed using a service-oriented architecture that supports real-time processing, visual risk dashboards, and long-term wildfire tracking, demonstrating the value of combining computer vision with language-based reasoning for scalable wildfire monitoring. The code and dataset are publicly available on GitHub at https://github.com/Ayanzadeh93/_WildfireVLM_.