Bringing wildfire scenario planning to life

Capital Shield Foresight training scenario.

As fire and other emergencies become more complex, chaotic and concurrent, incident managers may find that traditional pre-season tabletop exercises struggle to cope with these new demands.

An emerging Australian company has seized the power of AI to develop a scenario package that moves faster, adapts to sudden changes, reacts to multiple pressures, and responds to decisions in real time, for better or for worse. Capital Shield’s Foresight platform is pitched as the next level full-dress rehearsal for wildfire and other emergency agencies.

The story starts back in 2020, when a group of undergraduates at the National Security College at the Australian National University established the Australian Crisis Simulation Summit. They brought together around 100 students from across Australia with Australian Government support to focus on realistic national security scenarios using a range of software platforms built for such exercises.

Tim Hobbs, CEO of Capital Shield, says the problem was that none of the platforms did what was actually needed. “They couldn’t generate a genuinely realistic exercise environment. We could build a compelling scenario on paper, but the tools couldn’t bring it to life.”

And so, Hobbs and his co-founder, Connor Kneebone, built a new software platform, using AI to lift the standard to include more complex, more dynamic scenarios, that can twist and turn in real time.

“It’s a browser-based environment built around doctrine that recreates the pressure of a real incident, with live spatial mapping, radio traffic, media calls, social media sentiment and stakeholder pressure all arriving at once, against a compressed operational clock,” he said.

“An agency can build a scenario in its own geography, with its own fuel loads, fire weather and community assets, then run its IMT through it. Because the environment is adaptive, the fire responds to the team’s decisions.”

Capital Shield has established relationships in the Defence and national security space with several Australian Government agencies using the platform, which links to the Australasian Inter-service Incident Management System (AIIMS), or as needed, to a state emergency plan, or to an organisation’s own crisis management plan or competency standards.

Capital Shield was an exhibitor at the IAWF Fire Behaviour and Fuels conference in Hobart in April this year and attracted strong interest demonstrating Foresight.

Capital Shield Foresight training scenario.
Capital Shield Foresight training scenario.

Foresight is also aimed at international use with take-up by agencies in Germany and Japan, and early approaches being made in the US and Canada.

The exercise can be delivered by one facilitator in person or remotely, with participants in different places able to share the same simulation for fire, flood, storm or other events.

Hobbs says the platform offers a better option to static and scripted exercises in current use worldwide. “They are often PowerPoint-based, with a facilitator reading injects off a list and giving a subjective debrief at the end. Everyone agrees it’s a great way to learn, and it is. But the pressure isn’t real, the realism isn’t there, and performance isn’t measured.

“We’ve taken exercises to the next level. In Foresight you’re making the decisions you’d be expected to make on the day of a real incident, in a live, reactive environment, but a safe one. The fire responds to your suppression strategy, the media and the community push back through the same channels you’d really use, and the clock doesn’t wait.

“Then at the end it recalls all of it and gives you a structured after-action review: here’s how you went, here’s where the gaps were, measured against the doctrine your organisation actually operates under. So, it’s not just a better way to rehearse, it’s the first time most teams can demonstrate their readiness rather than assert it.”

For more on Foresight go to:

https://www.capitalshield.com.au

Nebraska Forest Service acquires advanced wildland fire simulator

Nebraska Forest Service SimTable

Above: Nebraska Forest Service Simtable. Screen grab from the KOTO video below.

We have written before about the Simtable that can project a spreading fire and an aerial photo onto a sand table that has been sculpted to resemble the topography for that area. It is an excellent training tool to simulate a potential fire or an actual on-going fire.

In this report from KDUH/KOTA the system recently acquired by the Nebraska Forest Service is described, including features that were new to me.

Below is an excerpt from the news coverage:

…NFS Fire Management Specialist Seth Peterson says the simulation gives fire officials advance knowledge of what they would need to do if a fire breaks out in a certain area. It could also make a big impact during a real wildfire event. A smartphone app for firefighters in the field can add valuable, on-site information to the simulator to make it react in real time.

“That iphone will know where he is on the map, and the IC (Incident Commander) will be able to see exactly where that firefighter is on the line. The firefighter can then update off his phone and basically feed the IC all the information he needs to be making all the decisions, without even being on the fire,” says Peterson…

Each simulator costs about $25,000.

Articles on Wildfire Today tagged “simulation”.

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Collecting, processing, and distributing weather and fire behavior data on a smart phone

A modern smartphone has many times the processing power of the computers on the Apollo spacecraft that took astronauts to the moon. Increasingly, wildland firefighters in the field are taking advantage of the smart brilliant devices in their pockets.

An article published in Fire Management Today (in the third quarter of 2015) covers two smart phone applications, or apps. After the user inputs the current weather and environmental conditions they can calculate various parameters and share them via mail or use various archiving options. One of the apps even uploads data to a remote computer server where advanced simulations can be performed which then return forecasts for the next 3 to 12 hours.

Fire Weather Calculator 

Fire Weather Calculator

(These images are screen shots from the app.)

Below, FDFM and PIG, are Fine Dead Fuel Moisture and Probability of Ignition. The app can harvest information from the smart phone and insert it into the fields, including time, date, latitude, longitude, and elevation.

Fire Weather Calculator

From Fire Management Today:

This application allows the user to input traditional observations (e.g., dry bulb, wet bulb, etc.) and have the application calculate critical information, such as relative humidity and probability of ignition, which both saves time and ensures consistency between weather observers. More importantly, however, is the ability to archive and share these digital observations with other users and managers in real time. This application allows for more streamlined management of weather information, a critical aspect of any fire event. The ability to share observations, particularly if many users are archiving their observations, will lead to a very useful archive of crowd-sourced data that will be used to create value-added products, such as the calculations of 3-dimensional weather fields that could be shared with personnel to increase their situational awareness.

Fire Weather Calculator is for Android devices and iPhones.

Topofire Weather app

The Topofire Weather app takes the weather calculations to the next level, however it is no longer available. In searching for it we contacted one of the authors of the article, Matt Jolly, a research ecologist at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, who told us that it has been removed because they “are working on better options for displaying geographic information across all devices, rather than just a few platforms. We are almost ready to release it but development is going slowly right now.”

Topofire Weather looks like it was rather intriguing, as you can see from the description in Fire Management Today:

Similar to the Fire Weather Calculator app described above, this application allows users to enter a suite of fire weather observations that are normally collected on incidents. These observations, as well as the time and location, are sent directly to the TOPOFIRE server, where they are permanently archived and can be made available to users and fire weather forecasters. Weather information entered into the phone can then be used to parameterize the WindNinja simulation model, using either current observations or gridded data from the Real-Time Mesocale Analysis dataset (RTMA).

Users can also request forecasts for the next 3 to 12 hours, using data from the National Digital Forecast Database. Model simulations are then run on the TOPOFIRE server, and outputs are returned to the user’s phone in the form of a keyhole markup language (.KML) file that can be opened on the phone on GoogleEarth.

Topofire

(The image above is from the article in Fire Management Today. Click on it to see a larger version.)

The Topofire Weather app apparently required access to government computer servers, which may prevent the ordinary user from being able to take advantage of its entire functionality.

We will look forward to the next generation of the app.

Second generation of Simtable being developed

In May we recorded the video above and told you about the Simtable which projects 3-D wildfire simulations onto a sand table which can be molded to resemble the topography in a specific area.  Fire modeling algorithms simulate the spread of fire through the vegetation and across the topography while also taking weather and fuel conditions into account. You can simulate a fire at your choice of location, or you can view the spread of historic fires. The system can also be used to simulate and train for evacuations, floods, and hazardous material incidents — at a starting price of $25,000.

A researcher at San Diego State University is developing the next generation of the Simtable which he hopes to put into the hands of wildland firefighters out on the ground.

10News reports:

“Any firefighter with a smartphone or tablet could download it and have the mapping system,” said [Justin Freiler of SDSU’s Visualization Center].

They are not there yet, as a mobile app is still in development, but the hope is to make the system available to firefighters in the near future.

Simtable demonstration

At the Large Fire Conference in Missoula, Montana today we were intrigued by the Simtable in the exhibits area. The technology uses a projector connected to a computer to place an image on a sand table, resulting in an amazing three dimensional simulation of the spread of fires. We first wrote about the system in 2010.

It is the software that takes it to the next level. Fire modeling algorithms simulate the spread of fire through the vegetation and across the topography while also taking weather and fuel conditions into account. You can simulate the spread of a fire at your choice of location. Or, you can view the spread of historic fires. So far the company has collected wildfire perimeter mapping data for dozens of actual fires over the last two years. Using linear interpolation it can produce videos showing the fire spread from beginning to end, or at least to the extent that mapping data is available.

It can all be yours at a starting price in the mid-$20,000s.

Below is a video that we shot today, showing Stephen Guerin demonstrating the system.

Wildfire suppression simulation combined with flight simulation

According to their web site, E-Semble “develops simulation software for the education, training and assessment of incident response and safety professionals, such as police, fire and medical services”. In the video above, they combined flight simulation software with their wildfire response simulation.

Fire simulations have changed since the 1980s. The one we used at Descanso Station in California used four overhead projectors behind a rear-projection screen, and two four-track reel-to-reel tape recorders that enabled eight possible sound effects. Involved in putting on the simulations were a director, an audio technician, a visual technician, and three to four role players. It was a very effective training tool.

Simulation of a P-3 air tanker

I don’t know if we will ever see another Aero Union P-3 air tanker flying over a fire in the United States, but to refresh your memory, check out this simulation of two P-3s working a fire near Aguanga, California.

Wildfire simulations

We used to think our four-projector system with two four-track reel-to-reel tape recorders and five actor/role players at Descanso, California was pretty sophisticated, but computer technology has taken simulation training for wildland firefighters to the next level. In an article at Firehouse.com, Mike Archer has assembled information about the current state of computer-based wildfire simulations, and compares products from three companies. They range from a basic system that takes a still image onto which you overlay smoke and flames (like our system at Descanso did), to a very customizable computer graphic-based image in which the trainee can fly around to see the incident from different vantage points. The prices for these systems range from $230 to $10,500.

Check out Mr. Archer’s article, (where three videos of the simulations will automatically begin playing simultaneously). Here is an excerpt about one of the products.

Based in Boise, ID, Bravo Delta, Inc, is the parent company of Total Immersion Simulation Systems (TISS), purveyors of a unique fire simulator that uses animation to allow users to model a wide variety of situations, including wildfires. The TISS environments are powered by E-sembles’ XVR [short for eXercise Virtual Reality and eXam Virtual Reality] training software. Through the use of XVR, they offer 2D or 3D visuals for their simulated environments. Their simulator packages are scalable from a single PC program to custom-made environments with immersion rooms or dome projection. Dennis Hulbert, a partner in Bravo Delta and a 38-year veteran of the fire service who retired as a Regional Aviation Officer with US Forest Service, provides some insight on this unique simulator.

“Our action-based scenarios use the latest technology to support ‘active learning’ [the learner is not restricted to follow a predefined learning path and not restricted to reading and observation] by immersing students into operational and tactical learning domains where, as individuals or working teams, they engage in interactive role playing with other trainees and educators,” Hulbert explained. “An active learner can interact with other trainees and the educator in the simulated environment and can learn by experimenting in the learning domain.”

Trainees have a variety of ways to experience the simulation. “Using a joystick, XVR allows one or more incident response professionals to walk, drive or fly around in the simulated reality of an incident,” Hulbert explained. “While the students are distracted by surrounding noise and confusion, they are expected to focus on their tasks and to set priorities.”

 

Fire simulations advance to the next level

Visually simulating the spread of vegetation fires has advanced far beyond the four overhead projector system we used to use at Descanso Station in southern California. The system described in the video below from KOB.com uses a projector connected to a computer to place an image on a sand table, resulting in an amazing three dimensional background on which to simulate the spread of fires. Check out this video.

More information, including a better video explaining how it works, is at Simtable.com.