UT Team Advances to XPRIZE Wildfire Semifinals
December 17, 2025
A team of scientists and engineers from The University of Texas at Austin was named one of 15 semifinalists in July 2025 to move on to the next stage of XPRIZE Wildfire’s $5 million Autonomous Wildfire Response Track.
Researchers from the Jackson School of Geosciences and UT Cockrell School of Engineering have teamed up with colleagues from the University of Southampton, University of Edinburgh and Texas A&M Forest Service to develop an autonomous fleet of drones that can detect and contain wildfires within minutes of ignition.
The XPRIZE Wildfire operations team will travel to each semifinalist team location for in-field testing.
The team — called FLARE-X — uses several types of uncrewed aerial vehicles to detect and suppress fires. The team’s solution involves: dynamic pre-fire risk mapping; active fire detection, monitoring and verification; and fire suppression.
The Jackson School is focused on developing advanced infrared sensors for fire detection and geolocation.
Research by Research Assistant Professor James Thompson and Associate Professor Ashley Matheny
Bureau of Economic Geology; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences