Flair Up

By Michael Hoose

A high-tension line sparked a fire in the early morning. The dry brush and high winds spread it to 90 acres in less than an hour. Steep rugged terrain prevented a fast knockdown and slowed the initial attack. With dawn approaching, engine strike teams staged to make a stand. The first observation aircraft indicated the wildfire had grown to more than 470 acres and the containment value was zero.

The incident command post four miles away operated at its chaotic norm as the incident commander and operations chief made their way toward a group of firefighters who were huddled around a monitor and barking orders over their radios to the units on the line. The monitor showed a color map of the burn area with a variety of map symbols representing dozer lines, structures and uncontrolled fire lines.

Suddenly, a flashing symbol representing a spot fire appeared on the screen. Displayed below the symbol was the identifier of the unit staged in that area. The operations chief looked at a photo taken just moments before showing 10-foot-tall wind-swept flames in a dry riverbed with houses nearby. With this information, the incident commander diverted a fixed-wing aircraft to suppress the spot fire.

The screen displayed the results of a new portable wildland fighting system known as FLAIR, or Fire Location and Incident Reporting. In its simplest form, FLAIR allows for line units to transmit high-resolution geo-coded images, situation reports and video clips from forward positions to incident command posts or other line units in near-real time.

Last year, while assigned to the Zaca Fire, I received a phone call from Jeff Lengyel, manager of Ricoh America's digital camera division. He wanted to outfit me with a rugged camera that had an on-board GPS, explaining that images taken with this camera appear automatically as hyperlinked points in mapping software like GoogleEarth and ArcGIS.

Never one to turn down cool gear and realizing this would be ideal for preplanning missions, vegetation management and fuels projects, I accepted the offer to try one out. But my mind was on firefighting, so I asked if there would ever be a day when I would be able to take GPS pictures, add notes and send them immediately from the line. Lengyel said he would have to get back to me on that one, and I figured that was that.

Lengyel called again a few hours later to say he could configure the camera to send images to a Blackberry automatically via Bluetooth, which would allow me to send them on. And that was the birth of FLAIR.

There have been revisions since that day to be sure. Feedback from the Cal IMT Team 4 and field tests on the Iron Complex and Marek fires brought about a slew of changes to FLAIR. The Blackberry quickly gave way to a ruggedized Trimble Nomad, and sending images by e-mail evolved into delivering them via far more reliable FTP to Internet-based maps. Today, FLAIR stands ready to not only deliver images but also an entirely new way to prepare for, and fight, wildfires.

To operate FLAIR, users start by entering their names and unit identifiers in their PDAs. This data accompanies any data the user sends. Users can snap a high-resolution picture with the Ricoh 500SE, and the image is geo-tagged with location and direction by the camera's built-in GPS and compass. A push of a button sends the image wirelessly via high-speed Bluetooth. Images appear instantly as thumbnails in the FLAIRsoft interface created by SDG Systems and are ready to send.

A selected image comes up in a simple-to-use editing screen where it can be drawn on, cropped, have notes added to it and be assigned an ICS map symbol to represent its category. Images also can be viewed in the on-board mapping interface for true situational awareness.

Using the send feature automatically packages the images and any notes or messages related to the image or image-set and delivers them to predetermined locations via the 3G Verizon or Sprint modem installed in the PDA. Approximate transmission times range from 30 seconds to just over a minute, depending on file size and cellular traffic. A transmission progress bar displays on-screen as images are sending and a queue is created for automatic sending if the operator is not in an active service area.

As images arrive on the secure destination server, they are organized into folders for each company. Image arrival triggers an RSS feed that alerts the ICP that new content is waiting for them to view. Viewing the images mapped in GoogleMaps requires only a standard Web browser and an Internet connection. ArcGis interfaces are available. The ICP or any authorized personnel can log onto the designated incident server address and view maps of the incident area including the icon symbols on the map that represent both the newly arrived images and other images taken during the incident or prior to it. This capability allows preplanning images to be viewed along with incident images to provide a clear, common operational picture of known vital assets such as structures, vegetation and existing dozer lines.

Arrows emitting from the symbols indicate the direction the camera was facing when the images were taken. Clicking an image's symbol opens a thumbnail of the image and a balloon with its associated notes and data. Clicking on the thumbnail opens the image for full-screen viewing, saving and printing. Images are imprinted with position, satellite time and direction for easy and accurate placement on wall maps or strategy boards.

The system provides instant situational awareness during active incidents to ensure appropriate changes to resource orders or that deployments can be made quickly while eliminating the need to pull resources off the line to deliver intel.

Having USAR, structure, or hazard images available on a map during an incident maximizes effectiveness of mission-critical decisions such as evacuation route planning for residents or critical infrastructure protection orders.

In addition to FLAIR's ability to enhance the fighting of fires themselves, it also can reduce operational costs. Content delivered by FLAIR allows personnel and resources to be deployed more effectively and efficiently. By ordering the correct amount of resources, accurate staffing is achieved at the appropriate costs. In short, FLAIR helps put the crews to work where there is work to be done.

Recently, a wireless Bluetooth laser rangefinder component was added that allows the location of the image symbol on the map to fall on distant locations for long-range fire-spotting missions.

Soon I plan to test FLAIR for hazmat incidents. There has to be some utility in sending geo-referenced images wirelessly to an ICP from a downrange contaminated environment. I'll put it though the paces in a mass-casualty drill shortly after that.

Capt. Michael Hoose is 14-year veteran with the Santa Barbara City (Calif) Fire Department currently assigned to a Type-3 engine and is red-carded in various overhead positions. He can be reached at mikehoose@verizon.net.