From Risk to Readiness: How Utilities Are Building Integrated Wildfire Technology Programs

Wildfire risk is a growing, systemic risk to the U.S. electric power system and to the customers and communities that utilities serve. Extreme wildfire activity has more than doubled worldwide over the last two decades. The Great Plains, the Southeast, and parts of the Midwest are increasingly exposed to wildfire risk that was once considered a western phenomenon.

Building on foundational research from PNNL and NARUC, SEPA convened a sample of five wildfire technology providers — Overstory, eSmart Systems, Technosylva, PanoAI, and Rhizome — and engaged more than 20 advisors to inform the development of a white paper and associated work products to help utilities and policy stakeholders navigate the wildfire technology landscape and integrate solutions to manage risk across their service territories.

While vegetation management and grid hardening remain the foundation of safety, the next frontier of wildfire resilience lies in integrated technology. Join us as we introduce SEPA’s Wildfire Technology Landscape report and the practical framework behind it — a six-stage lifecycle that connects mitigation planning, forecasting, AI-powered detection, and post-event recovery into one operational picture.

Audience Will Learn:

Hear directly from a sample of five leading wildfire technology providers on how their tools work in the field and how they integrate across the lifecycle. National lab and subject matter expert advisors will share how this framework fits into the industry’s broader efforts to reduce ignition risk and build more confident and defensible wildfire programs. We will close with an interactive Q&A designed for participants navigating capital constraints, regulatory requirements, and a rapidly expanding wildfire risk landscape.

Key Takeaways:

• The Six-Stage Framework: How to map technologies across the full wildfire lifecycle and how data flows between stages to improve every decision downstream.
• Maximizing ROI: How utilities of all sizes are reducing ignitions and increasing risk reduction per dollar.
• Regulatory Success: How to build confident and defensible wildfire programs
• The Integrated Stack: How AI-powered detection cameras, fire behavior models, aerial inspection platforms, vegetation analytics, asset condition intelligence, and capital optimization platforms work together to create a unified operational picture.