Locals Gabrielle and Christopher Tylor, the founders and directors of the Sunshine Coast based company Exci, were awarded the Innovative Planet Impact Award on 13 October in Melbourne.
The awards acknowledge Swinburne University of Technology alumni from around the world whose exceptional endeavour has resulted in a significant impact on local and/or global environmental sustainability.
The awards ceremony was joined by hundreds of guests from around the world.
In her speech, Swinburne Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Pascale Quester said, “Swinburne has always been a place that has invited the curious, the creative, the innovative, and those with a drive to make a difference.”
Gabrielle and Christopher Tylor hired a Sunshine Coast-based team of data scientists and software engineers to develop an early bushfire detection system to mitigate the climate change-driven implications of unprecedented fire disasters across the globe.
Exci’s wildfire detection system is powered by proprietary deep machine learning algorithms (advanced Artificial Intelligence) that detects bush/wildfires within minutes after ignition by analysing satellite and ground-based sensor data for the presence of smoke and heat.
Even small fires are automatically detected within minutes, with a near-zero rate of false positives.
Exci is the only early wildfire detection system that has been proven in large-scale deployments, with more than 800 cameras in California (monitoring over 125 million acres).
Exci also protects commercial plantations in Queensland with nearly 400,000 hectares between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast and 2 million hectares of State forests in NSW.
Christopher is currently in discussions with the Australian, South Australian and Queensland governments.
He also had the privilege to present Exci to 3000 delegates from more than 40 countries at the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference in September in Brisbane, which was hosted by Australia in partnership with the United Nations Office for Disaster Reduction.
Christopher and Gabrielle feel very honoured and proud to be recognised among this impressive group of alumni for their contribution to building a better world with Exci’s world-leading bushfire detection system.
