Northwest Aerospace News February | March 2018 Issue No. 1 | Page 37

Create Something Greater
T
hat better allows them to predict where the fire could jump ahead so they
can deploy hotshot teams to contain the new outbreak before it grows out of
control.
When fires burn on the edge of settled areas, having instant access to infor-
mation on where the fire is and where it’s headed helps incident commanders
decide how to deploy their resources—which of the 12 homes along a road, for
example, are most at-risk and need to have water trucks sent to them first.
Having real-time data on where the fire is and where it’s going also helps
law-enforcement officials prioritize their efforts to evacuate homeowners,
Prange said.
As the fire bears down on them, TacAero’s eye-in-the-sky can keep firefighters
on the ground informed on where their safest escape route is—and when it’s
time to use it, said Wells. That knowledge can help incident commanders bet-
ter evaluate risks, and might allow them to put a team on the ground in a spot
they might have considered to be too risky before.
“The technology we’re using allows people on the ground to see the video
right now,” he said. “That’s the best and fastest situational awareness there is.”
“The incident commander can respond in real time to a wind shift,” Prange
added. “Real-time imagery changes the game for these guys.”
There currently are services that provide overnight aerial thermal-imaging
maps of forest fires, but those are based out of airfields in Idaho and Utah, and
they only operate at night, Wells said. By the time they deliver a fire map to
the incident commanders, its information could be eight or ten hours old.
Compare that to what TacAero offers—data from the fire streamed in real-time
and overlaid upon a Google Map to provide a map that’s constantly updating.
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