A Portable Situational Awareness Toolset for Wilfires Suppression and Team Management

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration summary documented 20 wildfire events between 1980 and 2021 that caused $1 billion or more in damages and noted that 16 of those have occurred since 2000. Despite advances in fire detection and integration of new technologies (unmanned aerial vehicles), communication and coordination for a fire incident still occurs primarily via radio or personal communication, limiting asset coordination, degrading response times, and impacting safety. To address this gap, a team led by Systems Technology, Inc. (STI), in collaboration with Bolder Flight Systems Inc., proposes to develop the Firefighter Integrated Reporting System and Transponder (FIRST) system to provide an enhanced situational awareness and command and control capability via a robust radio mesh network and smartphone / tablet-based application. The radio mesh network will enable communication and position establishment for all equipped ground and aerial based units, even in a GPS denied environment. The app-based interface will provide overlays of unit position, movement history, fire lines, and aerial retardant drop locations among others. The goal of FIRST is to provide a small footprint (<1lb), low-cost resource that significantly enhances the situational awareness of firefighting assets. FIRST will leverage STI's existing display / test platform MCRUER as its framework. System requirements will be established with relevant stakeholders (USFS, CalFire, etc.) and candidate display environments and controls will be assembled and evaluated by trained wildfire personnel. In addition, the initial mesh radio network will be established and its suitability for the task demonstrated in a representative environment.