The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Selects Ecopia AI to Deliver High-Precision Mapping Data to Support Fire Mitigation and Response

May 28, 2025 – Today Ecopia AI (Ecopia) announces that it was selected by California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) - Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM) to deliver high-precision mapping data of buildings, tree canopy, water bodies, and other land cover features across the state. As the state’s fire department and forestry agency, CAL FIRE is at the forefront of protecting California’s forests, undertaking critical mitigation and fire response activities. CAL FIRE will leverage Ecopia’s high-precision geospatial data to analyze the vulnerability of structures and communities, assess damage post-fire, prioritize recovery efforts, and improve overall wildfire mitigation capabilities. 

A leader in artificial intelligence (AI)-based mapping, Ecopia has a 10+ year track record of providing comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date geospatial data to governments, private companies, and non-profit organizations to help support analysis and decision-making. Ecopia’s advanced AI-based mapping systems rapidly digitize geospatial imagery, generating high-definition vector maps at scale with the accuracy of a trained GIS professional. 

Leveraging high-resolution aerial imagery from Hexagon, Ecopia extracted building footprint and land cover data across California’s Fire Hazard Severity Zones (FHSZ), which cover more than 30% of the state, totaling over 32 million acres. Land cover data layers delivered to CAL FIRE include buildings, roads, bridges, driveways, parking, sidewalks, pavement, swimming pools, sports fields, grass, shrubs, railways, open water, tree canopy, and barelands. Ecopia used these features to attribute essential information to each building footprint, such as distance to nearest tree, distance to nearest water body, and distance to nearest building - factors that can contribute to fire spread.

CAL FIRE relies on building footprint data for a range of purposes, including fire protection, land use planning, fire hazard zoning, and more. As new construction and redevelopment occur, it is vital for this data to be regularly updated to ensure accuracy. Ecopia’s comprehensive dataset will play a crucial role in wildfire risk assessment, helping CAL FIRE analyze the vulnerability of structures and communities to wildfires and ensure that newly developed areas are accurately classified in fire hazard zoning. 

Additional use cases of this data include supporting fuel reduction initiatives to protect residential and commercial structures, as well as enabling the creation of impactful map visualizations to inform the public about wildfire risks and encourage participation in wildfire preparedness programs. In the aftermath of a fire, this data can play a critical role in assessing damage and guiding the prioritization of recovery efforts.

“The need for accurate information on buildings and the surrounding landscape data is more pressing than ever,” said Frank Bigelow, Deputy Director of the Community Wildfire Preparedness and Mitigation Division at CAL FIRE. “By partnering with Ecopia, we can rapidly build a comprehensive and reliable database of building footprints and their surrounding environment. This will be instrumental in supporting our efforts to protect communities, secure infrastructure, and preserve valuable resources across California.”

“Ecopia is proud to partner with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection,” said Jon Lipinski, Co-Founder and President of Ecopia AI. “CAL FIRE is carrying out exceptional work to protect citizens and infrastructure and we are privileged to provide them with the essential data needed to support decision-making.”

For more information on Ecopia, click here. To browse off-the-shelf datasets, click here.

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About The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection 
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) is California's fire department and forestry agency. The organization is comprised of nearly 12,000+ permanent and seasonal employees. The mission of the Department is to serve and safeguard the people and protect the property and resources of California. Learn more at https://www.fire.ca.gov/ 

About Ecopia AI
Ecopia is on a mission to create a digital twin of the Earth. We leverage artificial intelligence to convert high-resolution imagery into high-precision 3D vector map data at scale. This data creates a digital representation of the physical world, forming the foundation of a digital twin for visualization, analytics, and decision-making. Ecopia’s data is leveraged by hundreds of commercial and government organizations across more than 100 countries around the world.