In this episode of Smart Forests Radio, we talk with Dr Shefali Juneja Lakhina about socially led innovations in
fire
technology and
policy
. Shefali is the co-founder of Wonder Labs, a climate justice-focused
social enterprise
based in California. Since 2021, as part of Wonder Labs’ flagship initiative—the Reimagining 2025: Living with Fire Design Challenge—Shefali has mentored student teams in conducting convergence research with community partners working to reduce catastrophic
wildfire
impacts in caring, equitable, and just ways. In the interview, Shefali shares insights from Wonder Labs’ State of FireTech Report, emphasising the importance of focusing on “fires that matter” and shifting away from early detection and suppression towards mitigation. She discusses how technology can help different communities prepare to live and work with fire in their unique contexts, providing examples such as BurnBot, a fuel treatment system for prescribed burns, and FireUp, a fire forestry workforce
platform
.
Interviewer: Jennifer Gabrys
Producer: Harry Murdoch
Listen on Apple and Spotify.
This radio episode was produced by the Smart Forests project funded by the European Research Council. Smart Forests is led by Professor Jennifer Gabrys and is based in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge.
Header image: Conducting a prescribed burn in Santa Barbara County, California. Image credit: Jeff Rumans, BurnBot Inc. Retrieved 29 Aug 2024 from https://hazards.colorado.edu/news/research-counts/care-equity-and-justice-reimagining-the-forestry-and-fire-workforce.
Smart Forests Atlas materials are free to use for non-commercial purposes (with attribution) under a
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
To cite this radio episode:
Lakhina, Shefali Juneja and Jennifer Gabrys "Shefali Lakhina: Innovating FireTech with Frontline Communities", Smart Forests Atlas (2024), https://atlas.smartforests.net/en/radio/shefali-lakhina. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13642633.