Data Overload & Decision Paralysis
A Solution to the Biggest Challenge in Wildfire Mitigation — Wildfire Data and Geospatial Intelligence
Wildfires have become an ever-present threat to communities, businesses, and electric utilities across the Western U.S. The science behind wildfires is well understood — fuel conditions, weather patterns and human behavior creates predictable ignition risks. But knowing this doesn’t make it easy for electric utilities to act.
The real challenge isn’t a lack of data — it’s too much data.
Government agencies maintain extensive wildfire-related databases, including fire history records from the USDA, predictive risk models from the U.S. Forest Service, and in-depth research from the Rocky Mountain Research Station. These datasets track vegetation moisture levels, historical burn patterns, and fire spread dynamics, offering critical insights for wildfire mitigation. However, this information is scattered across multiple agencies, stored in different formats, and governed by varying methodologies and assumptions.
Engineers responsible for wildfire mitigation must navigate this fragmented landscape, manually compiling and interpreting disparate datasets to extract meaningful insights — a time-consuming and complex process that slows decision-making.
This process is slow, overwhelming, and prone to human error. Even the most experienced engineers can only process so much information at once.
That’s where Athena Intelligence comes in.
Giving the Land a Voice — Turning Complexity Into Clarity
Athena’s Voice of the Acre® platform revolutionizes how electric utilities es approach wildfire risk mitigation. Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, it ingests vast amounts of wildfire-related data and distills it into easily interpretable risk probabilities.
Instead of engineers spending hundreds of hours cross-referencing datasets, building models, and second-guessing their assumptions, Athena does the heavy lifting for them. The platform synthesizes real-time satellite imagery, climate trends, land conditions, and fire behavior science to generate risk forecasts tailored to a utility’s service area.
Rather than presenting endless spreadsheets and raw datasets, Athena provides clear, actionable intelligence — allowing engineers to quickly pinpoint high-risk areas and prioritize their wildfire mitigation efforts accordingly.
Time Saved, Money Saved, Lives Protected
Geospatial analysis from Athena, refines the data, allowing utility engineers to make wildfire mitigation decisions with speed and confidence. Instead of relying on fragmented data sources and manual analysis, engineers gain access to clear, actionable intelligence that streamlines their decision-making process.
This isn’t just about efficiency in prioritizing projects— it’s about safety and cost-effectiveness. By proactively identifying and addressing high-risk zones, utilities can significantly reduce their exposure to liability, generate risk to impact assessments, and justify spending to regulators, co-op members and other stakeholders.
Historically, engineers and planners had to rely on gut instinct, fragmented data, and slow manual analysis to guide wildfire prevention efforts. Athena transforms this approach into one driven by data science and AI-powered insights. The result? Faster decisions, smarter investments, and better protection for communities and critical infrastructure.
One of the key advantages is the ability to quickly assess wildfire risk levels across different parts of the grid. With Athena’s data-driven insights, utilities can identify areas where fire conditions are most likely to develop, allowing them to allocate resources more effectively.
Another major benefit is the ability to prioritize vegetation management in the areas most at risk. Quarterly updates, with a rolling 12-month forward perspective, take into account the changing risk profile based on burn-scars, changing weather patterns, plant growth and prior mitigation projects. Vegetation management departments can focus their efforts on the locations most susceptible to ignition, reducing fuel loads and minimizing fire hazards in the most critical zones.
Beyond vegetation management, Athena helps engineers evaluate infrastructure hardening projects where they will have the greatest impact. By pinpointing high-risk areas, utilities can place sensors in the most critical areas and invest in targeted upgrades — such as insulated power lines, undergrounding, or protective barriers — that provide the highest return on investment in fire prevention.
Finally, Athena’s data-backed insights help utilities justify decisions to regulators and stakeholders with clear, quantitative evidence. In an era of increasing regulatory scrutiny and public accountability, having solid, science-based reasoning behind wildfire mitigation strategies strengthens a utility’s position and ensures compliance with evolving safety standards.
Proactive Wildfire Resilience
The reality is that wildfires are more frequent, larger and more destructive, outpacing human responses. With Athena Intelligence, utilities can move from reactive fire response to proactive risk mitigation, making smarter, faster, and more cost-effective decisions that protect both infrastructure and communities.
The threat of wildfire isn’t going away, but the way we prepare for it is evolving. Athena Intelligence is leading the way in helping electric utilities move from reactive firefighting to proactive risk mitigation.
With Voice of the Acre®, engineers no longer need to spend hundreds of hours wrestling with raw data. Instead, they can focus on what matters most — protecting the grid, reducing risk, and keeping communities safe.
Athena Intelligence is a data vendor with a geospatial, conditional, profiling tool that pulls together vast amounts of disaggregated wildfire and environmental data to generate spatial intelligence, resulting in a digital fingerprint of wildfire risk.
Clients include electric utilities, communities and financial services companies, where Athena’s geospatial intelligence incorporated into multiple products that can be accessed through an online portal. Athena’s data is currently used in wildfire mitigation plans (WMP) and public safety power shutoffs (PSPS), Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP), property insurance underwriting and portfolio risk optimization.
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