Original article can be found here.
by The Center Square
Having worked in fire safety and emergency response for almost 50 years, I have seen extraordinarily brave people fight increasingly extreme wildfires with inadequate tools for communication and coordination. The establishment of the U.S. Wildland Fire Service gives us a chance to change that.
The proposed consolidation of federal wildland fire management under the Department of the Interior, initially involving five entities joining forces as one united front under the Dept of Interior for managing wildfire response at the federal level, is a sound move for all stakeholders. As the new agency examines practices across the whole spectrum from forest management and controlled burns to aerial attack and drones, one of the most important aspects of wildfire response that merits modernizing is data and communication.
Currently, when a wildfire crosses between multiple jurisdictions, confusion often occurs. A dispatcher runs one platform at one agency, the incident command works from a different one, local, state, federal and tribal partners work from multiple platforms. This is not some small annoyance, but a liability that can put lives and resources at risk and, as fires have grown, a national problem.
Thankfully, there is a solution. The emergence of the National Emergency Response Information System (NERIS) was the country’s first modern replacement for data architecture that had been in place for decades. NERIS was designed on the principle that firefighters cannot make good decisions without timely and accurate data. That same principle must be interwoven into the fabric of the federal wildfire agencies.
That means adopting an integrated, agnostic, common operational platform across the different fire agencies by especially are federal wildfire agencies, linking aerial assets to ground crews with a common map that updates continually. Platforms such as IGNIS, built by former wildland firefighters, are already being used on fires by a wide variety of response teams right now, integrating live aircraft position, drops, ground crew position, and fire perimeter data into one operational picture. Rather than build a parallel system from scratch, we should look to the field, see what’s already working, and pick one that provides for integrations and interoperability.
IGNIS was deployed in the field in February, and since then it has grown to more than 30,000 downloads. The company is currently running a pilot project focused on getting real-time wildfire information directly into the hands of firefighters and incident management teams. That includes imagery, live video, and other information they can use to make better tactical and strategic decisions on an incident. OroraTech has also partnered with IGNIS to bring early satellite fire detection and modeling into the platform.
The fire services and newly formed US Wildland Fire Service (USWFS) have the opportunity to take bold steps, change the status quo, and make an enormous impact on the way we fight wildfires in America. Consolidating the federal wildfire response onto one digital platform shared by all emergency responders would be low hanging fruit, and it would be enormously impactful overnight.
The men and women of the fire service and those who wear the federal wildfire patch next fire season deserve better than the fragmented tools the individuals before struggled with for years. If we can connect the fire service and the federal wildfire agencies data to the structural fire and emergency medical data that NERIS is collecting, that would be even better. First and foremost, however, we must fund a common operating picture.
Fire services around the world are all confront with the same three questions continually when it comes from fire response: What is happening right now? What will happen? What did we learn? Meaningful answers to these questions require data, and real progress requires that data to be shared on one common operating platform that provides for integrations and interoperability. When the stakes are as high as they are in the case of wildfires, first responders can’t afford to be slowed down by obsolete technology. If the fire service and federal wildfire agencies agrees and acts, we will have clear skies and a bright future ahead.
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