The Miller-McCune web site has started a five-part series about wildfire.
Part I: THE FIRES DOWN BELOW: ‘LOOK-DOWN’ TECHNOLOGY
Part II: UNDERSTANDING WILDFIRE BEHAVIOR AND PREDICTING ITS SPREAD
Part III: WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING ON U.S. FIRELINES
Part IV: CATCHING WILDFIRE ARSONISTS RED-HANDED
Part V: SMART SOLUTIONS GOING FORWARD
Here is a brief excerpt from Part 1, which covers at length many different options and technologies for collecting and distributing real-time or near-real time intelligence about going fires.
The Viz Lab is a large, dimly lit, war room dominated by huge, computer-generated maps projected onto dark walls. Its tool kit includes an array of links to information and imaging feeds gathered by satellites, airplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles (or UAVs) and helicopters from sources like NASA and Google Maps. The lab is bent on delivering real-time (or pretty darned close) computer mapping and imaging to a wildfire’s first responders so they’ll know just what the blaze is doing, where and when.
Data fusion is the name of the game at the San Diego State University’s Immersive Visualization Center — layering sophisticated weather, atmospheric, smoke and fire data and images onto, say, a topographical Google Earth map. It provides an illuminating picture for emergency operations chiefs who urgently need to pinpoint trouble spots and interpret fast-changing developments.
Once, fire perimeters were indicated by simple black lines on old-fashioned land maps — best guesses made from the field without benefit even of GPS. Now, satellites or aircraft use “look down” technology to create 3-D topographical images of what lies below dark, billowing smoke. Tools distinguish live from burned vegetation and show in various colors rapidly updated information on a blaze’s “hot spots” and accelerating or subsiding dangers.
“It’s absolutely dramatically more useful,” explained Eric Frost, co-director of the Viz Lab.
The Viz Lab normally focuses on geographic information systems research for homeland security and disaster relief. But it also proactively tracks everything from brush fires on its doorstep to natural disasters worldwide. Last February, for example, it helped map wildfires in Australia that killed 173 people. “It takes less than half a second to go from here to Australia on fiber optics,” Frost noted.
Here is a video about an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, being developed by San Diego State University. The researchers have been working with firefighters in an attempt to show them its usefulness on fires.
(THE VIDEO IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE)
