Finalist

To protect communities across California from devastating wildfires, NV5 pioneered a shift from reactive inspections to predictive, AI-driven risk management. The USD 4 million project delivered leading-edge vegetation intelligence across a massive scale, monitoring over 17,600 miles of utility infrastructure—including 1,387 circuits and 864 substations—within 5,755 square kilometers of high-risk territory.

By integrating high-precision lidar data and AI-powered classification with Bentley’s PLS-CADD and MicroStation, NV5 automated the analysis of immense geospatial datasets. This digital workflow enabled the team to identify vegetation encroachments with nearly 99% detection accuracy, providing an outstanding, top-tier societal safety impact while ensuring regulatory compliance and safeguarding critical infrastructure.