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Indian American girl honoured for her climate change project

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2021 Children’s Climate Prize for her concept on utilizing artificial intelligence to prevent forest fires. The 15-year-old Reshma Kosaraju was picked from among the finalists for her innovative proposal, which employs artificial intelligence to detect forest fires. According to the report, forest fires have emerged as a global concern, killing more than 339,000 people prematurely across the world and endangering biodiversity by destroying animals and natural habitats.

The Swedish corporation Telge Energi established the Children’s Climate Prize (CCP). It has been granted annually since 2016 to youngsters aged 12 to 17 throughout the world who have made exceptional efforts to enhance living on the planet for the current and future generation of children. According to the website, the prize honors and recognizes young innovators, entrepreneurs, changemakers, and conservators and brings them to limelight in order to convey hope and encourage others.

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According to the organizers, this year witnessed a record number of youngsters from 32 different nations who have been nominated for the prize. The Children’s Climate Prize recipients were honored in a gala ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. They are awarded a diploma certificate, a medal, and SEK 100,000 in prize money to further advance their projects.

While fires are a natural component of a forest’s ecosystem, Kosaraju’s initiative emphasizes that the underlying conditions have altered. According to the press release, the technology, known as ‘AI Against Forest Fires,’ is capable of forecasting forest fires with an accuracy of about 90%. She used meteorological data such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, and soil moisture to develop her deep learning model. Additionally, she examined human behavior too.

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Reshma combines open data sources such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, soil moisture, and human activity with AI to determine where and when the  possibility of a forest fire is high. She aims to develop her project into a useful app to help firefighters. Additionally, she thinks it would benefit those who live in areas prone to forest fires. According to the website, Reshma’s initiative will be recognized globally. It said, “Reshma hopes the Children’s Climate Prize will draw attention to her project so that more people can become aware of the AI model’s existence”.

According to the judges who chose Reshma as the winner, climate change and forest fires are becoming serious issues and are lasting longer. They highlighted the importance of this project at this time and appreciated the initiative. They said,  “Reshma represents the best of youth entrepreneurship: brave, innovative and solution-oriented. Her model uses AI and technology in an innovative and savvy way in order to accurately predict the risk of forest fires while also accounting for the independent variables of climate, weather and human behavior.”

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