Mila’s applied research team and Natural Resources Canada have released an AI surrogate model that copies the BurnP3+ wildfire simulator but runs in seconds instead of days. The model can map a 130,000 km² region in about 174 seconds on a standard CPU, or 41 seconds on a GPU. It delivers a speedup of 800‑to‑3,400 times while keeping accuracy acceptable to wildfire experts. The code and model are open‑source, so any BurnP3+ user across Canada can download and use it for planning fire prevention, fuel management, and land‑use decisions.
Why it matters
It turns wildfire risk mapping from a multi‑day batch job into a near‑real‑time tool for Canadian agencies and industry.
