Minderoo's high-tech plan to extinguish any bushfire within one hour

Andrew Forrest's philanthropic Minderoo Foundation believes that within five years technology will make it possible to detect and snuff out any potentially dangerous bushfire within one hour of it starting.

The ambitious timetable and goal are part of what Minderoo is calling its Fire Shield Mission, a project led by former CSIRO Data61 chief executive Adrian Turner who almost lost his life while fighting to protect his brother's Kangaroo Valley home in NSW from bushfires last summer.

The $500 million mission, set to be officially launched in Canberra on Tuesday, aims to reduce the scale and impact of bushfires by finding new methods to detect, monitor and extinguish dangerous blazes within one hour, anywhere in Australia, by 2025.

It was kick-started with $50 million in funding from Minderoo and has the backing of six of the ASX's top-10 companies by market capitalisation plus leaders in the fields of science and technology, and other philanthropic organisations.

The firefighting plan relies on the latest in remote-sensing technology – satellites, aerial surveillance, ground sensors – to detect fires more quickly and before they become dangerous.

Under the plan, artificial intelligence and machine learning will help decide which fires pose the biggest risk and drones and autonomous vehicles will play a big part in extinguishing blazes.

Mr Turner said natural disasters had caused more than $120 billion in damage in Australian in the past two decades.

"The impacts of climate change will only make this worse," he said.