The Governing Council of the University of Toronto

Purpose

Early identification of the type of hazardous materials within freight fires is particularly important for the safety of public as well as first responders. First responders routinely confront unknown hazards which might cause explosions or toxicant release in response to ordinary fire extinguishers. Therefore, the objective of this Project is the development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool that assists first responders in identifying hazards, along with a set of recommendations associated with the most effective mitigation measures. The AI tool will consist of data gathering sensors to collect real time information on freight fires, a machine learning-based classifier to identify the type of material burning, and a real-time search algorithm to recommend mitigation measures.