Report: Wildfire crews should turn to existing technology, from drones to webcams
Available technology such as internet satellite communications, networks of drones and 24-hour webcam monitoring could offer wildfire crews critical information on the speed and direction of flames, according to a white paper published May 15 by the Aerospace Corp.
However, the report also says the regional command structure of firefighting agencies in the U.S. could hamper the coordination needed to rapidly adopt these communication and detection technologies.
A team of experts coordinated by Aerospace Corp. interviewed firefighting agencies and reviewed reports to identify gaps or severe problems faced by field crews that could be solved by technology, said Tim Hall, chief meteorologist and weather architect for Aerospace Corp. The report found it would cost $350 million to $700 million per year to deploy existing technology to address the most pressing challenges.
“Due to funding concerns about developing new technology, we tried to look at ways that you could leverage investments that have already been made” and provide those relatively quickly, Hall told me in an interview.
Firefighters have high-tech equipment and communications in the field, but that connectivity usually ends wherever their trucks park, Hall said. That’s why several recommendations in the report were aimed at ensuring individual firefighters can communicate once they leave their trucks.
Other top challenges identified were the need for a common operating picture, rapid fire detection, individual firefighter tracking, persistent surveillance of fire-prone areas, debris or fire “fuels” intelligence and weather forecasting.
“Real-time firefighter location information will enhance firefighter safety and facilitate better command and control through improved situational awareness by incident commanders and other key operational staff,” the report found.
Among the solutions identified were “fixed wildfire cameras, commercial space-based wildfire surveillance, remote personal tracking devices, and satellite-based communication capabilities,” it added. The report also noted an application developed for field deployment situations by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, known as the Tactical Assault Kit or Team Awareness Kit for civil uses, could be adapted and effectively deployed for firefighting.
Cameras set high on mountaintops or fire watchtowers already monitor landscapes for columns of smoke that indicate wildfires, but more can be added. That imagery should be monitored not just by people, but also software trained via artificial intelligence to recognize such threats, the report said.
To address coordination, the report recommended establishing a combined National Wildfire Intelligence Center to spearhead standards, rapidly prototype and field new capabilities, and ensure fire intelligence is sent out in “a timely manner on a high-performance” data connection. Such a center could be co-located with existing firefighting entities such as the National Interagency Fire Center, the authors wrote.
Saving lives and preventing catastrophes like the Palisades fire of 2025 are the ultimate goals, said Ian McCubbin, a systems engineer with the NASA-funded Jet Propulsion Laboratory who’s one of the paper authors.
“If you look at the death, the horrible, the horrible reality of incidents where firefighters are killed in the line of duty, most of them don’t have real-time information about wind direction, where the fire location is,” he said. “They’re sitting there eating lunch and they can’t reach them in time to notify them in time, and that’s what we have the technology to prevent.”
