CalFire Alexa Skill: Bringing Real-Time Wildfire Information to Citizens
Overview
The Cal Poly Digital Transformation Hub (DxHub), powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), collaborated with CalFire to revolutionize how citizens access critical wildfire information through voice-enabled technology. This innovative project leverages Amazon’s Alexa platform to create an intelligent voice assistant that provides real-time updates about active wildfires, emergency preparedness information, and location-based alerts. By combining advanced geolocation capabilities with CalFire’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, the solution helps citizens quickly access vital information about nearby fires while enabling opt-in notifications for emerging situations.
Problem
During wildfire emergencies, citizens need immediate access to accurate, location-specific information about fire threats in their area. Traditional methods of accessing this information often require navigating multiple websites or waiting for broadcast updates, which can be challenging during rapidly evolving situations. Additionally, citizens with family members in different locations need easy ways to check fire conditions in multiple areas. This creates a critical need for a more accessible, user-friendly system that can deliver real-time wildfire information through natural conversation.
Innovation In Action
The DxHub team developed a cutting-edge solution that transforms how users interact with wildfire information through voice commands. The Alexa skill leverages natural language processing to handle various user queries about fire locations, distances, and safety preparations. The system stands out through several innovative features:
The solution provides location-aware responses by integrating with both fixed Echo devices and mobile phones, enabling users to ask about fires near their current location or specific California cities. When users inquire about nearby fires, the system can provide precise distance measurements, fire size, and origin points based on real-time data from CalFire’s CRM system.
A particularly powerful feature is the emergency preparedness information system. Users can quickly access wildfire readiness resources and receive directions to authoritative websites like readyforwildfire.org. The skill can even offer to send web addresses directly to users’ phones through the Alexa app, ensuring they have persistent access to critical information.
To ensure accuracy and timeliness, the system includes timestamps with all fire updates, helping users understand when information was last refreshed and promoting transparency in emergency communications.
Technical Solution
The technical implementation leverages a comprehensive suite of AWS services to create a secure, scalable, and efficient system. At its core, the solution utilizes Amazon Echo devices as the primary interface for users to interact with the CalFire skill through natural voice commands. The Alexa Skills Kit provides the fundamental development framework for creating the custom skill, while AWS Lambda functions power the backend processing of voice commands and handle the essential business logic. The infrastructure is managed through AWS CloudFormation, enabling consistent and repeatable deployments across environments. Amazon S3 Standard Storage serves as a reliable repository for deployment artifacts and other necessary resources. The architecture follows a serverless design pattern where user interactions flow seamlessly from Echo devices through the Alexa Skills Kit to Lambda functions, which then communicate with CalFire’s Realtime Incident API to fetch current fire information. This elegant integration ensures that users receive accurate, up-to-date emergency information while the serverless approach provides automatic scaling capabilities and high availability with minimal operational overhead.
Next Steps
CalFire is preparing to launch the Alexa skill publicly, with plans to refine the system based on user feedback and real-world usage patterns. Future enhancements may include:
- Expanded integration with additional emergency response systems
- Enhanced mobile capabilities for location-based alerts
- Additional language support to serve California’s diverse population
- Integration with other smart home platforms beyond Alexa
Supporting Documents
| Source Code | All of the code and assets developed during the course of creating the prototype. |
About the DxHub
The Cal Poly Digital Transformation Hub (DxHub) is a strategic relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is the world’s first cloud innovation center supported by AWS on a University campus. The primary goal of the DxHub is to provide students with real-world problem-solving experiences by immersing them in the application of proven innovation methods in combination with the latest technologies to solve important challenges in the public sector. The challenges being addressed cover a wide variety of topics including homelessness, evidence-based policing, digital literacy, virtual cybersecurity laboratories and many others. The DxHub leverages the deep subject matter expertise of government, education, and non-profit organizations to clearly understand the customers affected by public sector challenges and develop solutions that meet the customer needs.