Schatz measures advance to improve fire weather forecasts and promote use of AI to predict extreme weather

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee today approved seven measures authored by US Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i). The provisions, included as amendments to several bills, would improve fire weather forecasts and warnings in remote or rural areas in Hawai‘i and across the country and promote the use of artificial intelligence to better predict and respond to extreme weather, among other things.  

“By improving fire weather forecasts and warnings, we can save lives and communities,” said Senator Schatz, a member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. “The committee’s vote today gets us one step closer to enacting life-saving measures that will improve weather forecasts and fire warnings in Hawai‘i and across the country. It also will help us realize AI’s full potential in a safe and responsible way.”

This comes following a floor address by Schatz earlier this week in which he paid tribute to the victims, honored survivors, outlined the needs of the Lahaina community, and called for continued federal support. The remarks were delivered ahead of the one year anniversary of the Maui fires on Aug. 8.

The seven Schatz provisions approved by the committee today will:

• Improve fire weather forecasts and warnings in remote or rural areas
  • The Lahaina wildfire highlighted the dangers that remote communities face from fire, and the need for forecasts and warning services to reach them in a timely and actionable way.  Schatz’s provision would mandate fire weather forecasts and warnings be disseminated to remote, isolated, or rural communities as effectively as anywhere else in the country.
• Strengthen weather forecasts with better data
  • The Schatz measure would direct the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to establish and maintain a National Mesonet Program. Mesonets are weather observation data networks that observe and track mesoscale weather events, and that are crucial for collecting local meteorological data, such as soil moisture and water levels, to better forecast weather, flood, fire and agricultural impacts.  Establishing the National Mesonet Program and outlining its objectives will help address critical gaps in weather data and forecasting.
• Promote AI technology to improve extreme weather forecasts
  • Schatz’s TAME Extreme Weather Act amendment requires NOAA to adopt and implement AI technologies to better predict and respond to extreme weather. The measure also urges NOAA to consider how to recruit and retain the AI workforce of the future, creating new scientific and technical jobs.
• Help stop illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing
  • Schatz’s amendment authorizes the US Department of Defense, in coordination with the US Coast Guard, to provide maritime technical assistance for combatting illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing to other nations. Some experts estimate that as much as one out of every five fish in the market is caught illegally with negative impacts to the future health of the oceans for a quick profit today, and this technical assistance will help solve this global problem.
• Encourage AI safety and innovation
  • Schatz’s amendment would award cash prizes to help encourage AI innovations.
• Support open government datasets to improve AI training
  • The provision would build on Schatz’s Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act, which required that federal agencies by default publish their data in a machine-readable format. This amendment would ensure that the new, curated public datasets for AI systems that are included in the Future of AI Innovation Act build upon the foundation created by the OPEN Government Data Act. AI is only as useful as the data it’s trained on, and making government data safely available for AI means that AI can help solve important problems.
• Help boost research on AI benefits
  • By improving scientific discovery and automating some tasks, AI has the power to solve problems and help people. The amendment will spur studies to help update or remove unnecessary regulations and allow positive deployments of AI technology to occur.