Harry Otten Prize for Innovation in Meteorology 2025 awarded to Assaf Shmuel for his idea “Listening to the Forest”

Harry Otten Prize for Innovation in Meteorology 2025 awarded to Assaf Shmuel his idea ”Listening to the Forest: AI-Driven Meteo-Acoustic Early Warning System for Wildfire Detection”.

The Harry Otten Prize for Innovation in Meteorology has been awarded for the 7th time. During the Annual Meeting of the European Meteorological Society currently taking place in Ljubljana, the jury announced that Assaf Shmuel from the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) has won the first prize of 25,000 Euro. His idea, Listening to the Forest: AI-Driven Meteo-Acoustic Early Warning System for Wildfire Detection, entails that fire has unique sounds, such as the crackle of embers or the snap of dry wood, which can be detected by AI-enhanced acoustic sensors. The system represents a new class of meteorological sensors that couple atmospheric conditions with AI-driven acoustic sensing to detect ignition events and dynamically assess fire risk. By deploying a network of low-cost acoustic sensors in wildfire-prone areas, this system can significantly enhance early detection capabilities.

The winner of the prize was selected from three finalists. The other two finalists received 2,500 Euros for their ideas.

A team consisting of Jessica Keune, Christopher Barnard, and Fredrik Wetterhall from ECMWF presented their idea called “How rare, how risky? Actionable warnings for extreme precipitation despite biased forecasts”.  They propose a novel, impact-based approach to weather forecasting that enables early warnings of pluvial flooding. The idea aims to quantify the rarity of extreme precipitation events by predicting return periods and to use return period forecasts to develop a risk-based early warning index with three actionable levels — prepare, watch, and act.

Francesco Marra (University of Padova, Italy) proposed an idea  A system to quantify insurance premiums for extreme rainfall downpours. His idea is to combine near term forecasts with a physics-informed statistical model to predict the probability of extreme downpours from changes in wet-day temperature. He proposes to develop a low-cost computational setup, incorporating physics-informativeness and tail-awareness, establish trustworthiness within the scientific community and the public, and assess transferability to untrained regions.

The jury received 9 applications for the prize with lead authors from 8 different countries in Europe and Africa. The Harry Otten Prize is awarded every two years. More information is available at the website at www.harry-otten-prize.org.