OVER THE HORIZON
Fighting fires is a team effort, with complex rapidly changing situations that require fast and accurate information in order for the team to work safely and effectively in achieving the common objective: to fight and control the fire.
Sounds wonderful, but unfortunately, real life gets in the way. Air attack or leader planes, flying up high, will see the world in a different than tankers skimming over the trees. When drop locations are identified by coordinating planes, it sometimes takes a little more than a few seconds on the radio to understand each other. Add a little smoke, haze or terrain challenges, and no wonder radio communications get clogged up, affecting team effectiveness and sometimes even safety.
Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources in Canada and the U.S. Forest Service are both currently looking at a system of real-time resource-tracking, team interaction and communication for air and ground forces to potentially solve this problem.
In an air attack situation, the primary job of the air attack plane is to:
Assess the situation;
Make decisions, especially with regards to drop locations; and
Give instructions that coordinate tankers, helicopters and other aircraft.
On the receiving end, pilots need to receive, interpret and execute on those instructions. The safety and effectiveness of the team depend on this. What can get in the way are information vacuums, radio congestion and messages not getting across.
Part of the challenge is that it isn't that easy to see aircraft at times, especially when they blend into the ground or sky. Distance compounds the problem. Aircraft are readily visible within a mile or two, but it gets challenging beyond that unless you really focus on the right spot. This falls short of the 5- to 10-mile radius of an air attack zone. In fire conditions with smoke around, and with a dozen or more aircraft nearby, maintaining visual contact with everyone is near impossible.
Air attack officers need to be thoroughly aware of the traffic and fire situation. They need to know who is out there; what type of aircraft they are flying; where they are in relation to the fire, rivers and roads; where they are going; and what their status is.
Right now the only way to get that situational awareness is to pick up the radio and build a mental image of the situation as pilots provide their positions. This is time-consuming in an environment where timely decision-making is key. To make matters worst, as soon as the mental mapping of the situation is complete, it becomes obsolete.
When radio is the prime medium to report one's position and situation, it often gets congested. And when things get busy, this can be a problem. Radio congestion prevents coordinators from giving instructions and other team members from calling in at key moments. When people are waiting to talk or uncertain about what to do next, effectiveness — or worse, safety — can be affected.
Communicating words is easy, but getting “the message” across is a lot harder sometimes. Air attack uses precise words to tell tankers or helicopters where to drop their load. This is effective and works most of the time, but not always. For example, situations of poor visibility can lead to ambiguity of the drop location, delays and potential danger if there are people on the ground.
A single, autonomous wireless application would provide a visual layout of the team in real time and in context while freeing up radio time. It would allow everyone to adapt the view of their environment to their own needs and to make faster decisions and communicate them visually.
Both Ontario and the Forest Service are conducting trial runs of the Livefire system from 9G Wireless. Its setup consists of a self-forming network based on individual portable devices carried by each of the team members, which eliminates the need for a central server, a heavy and expensive network, and use of the voice-channel of the radio. The system uses a seamless peer-to-peer communication, based on a maintenance-less and cost-less ad-hoc network, which provides sharing of information anywhere, anytime. Pocket PCS and telemetric-like screens optimally positioned in cockpits for best and easy viewing display a user-defined level of details. User profiles determine types of functionality, such as access to different views and levels of data entry.
Specifically designed for frontline firefighting, the system allows users to:
See the current status of other team members' relative to their own positions overlaid on a map;
Share and contribute to a collective pool of live information about the fire and accessible resources (helipads, pick-up lakes, etc.); and
Provide one-click tools to visually provide instructions such as drop-locations.
This has a number of key benefits for those on the front-line, such as providing everyone in the team with a collective, real-time awareness of the current situation without occupying any valuable radio-time. Also, information that previously could be difficult to get across, such as drop-locations or helipads is now unambiguously displayed on a map, available for everyone who wants to access it. Finally and foremost, the safety and effectiveness of the team in fighting and controlling the fire are greatly improved.
Geographic collaboration starts with the ability to track the location of team members in real-time. The system provides all users with a real-time visual display of the local traffic, showing each team member's position, type, identification and altitude, all overlaid on a moving map that shows the lakes, rivers, roads and fire perimeter when available. Knowing where everyone is no longer relies on lengthy and repeated exchanges, but on a simple glance to the application screen displaying an automatic and real-time map of the situation.
What if, for a particular mission, aircraft or trucks are contracted from other agencies, states, provinces or third-party companies? The system also includes guest units that, if they can't be set up to assist the pilot or driver, can be thrown into the aircraft or vehicle, to at least provide the exact same tracking information to the rest of the team.
In addition to tracking, each user can share data that might be of interest to the rest of the group. If a helicopter pilot finds a hole in the trees, for instance, he can mark it as a helipad and have it show up not only on his screen, but on everyone else's in real time. Everyone then knows about this resource, and can either use it or avoid it.
This takes on particular significance in large-scale fires, where knowing the location of a wide variety of different resources is key. Helipads, base camps, fuel caches, fire lines and more can now be displayed in real time, along with fire information when available — a process that previously could have taken hours or days.
The system offers the ability for the air attack officer to assign a task to other team members. Drop locations can be marked, along with the best route approach. Each drop location is then assigned to tankers or helicopters, which then get an ADF-like (automatic direction finder) needle display that points to their assigned drop location and provides bearing, distance and time to drop location.
Air attack is essentially able to create instrument-like approaches. Although a tanker pilot would not use this guidance right up to the drop location, many tanker pilots have said that it instantly adds clarity to air attack's intended message from many miles back.
Communication ambiguities are significantly reduced and so are related risks, especially for ground units. Communicating instructions through such a system is also particularly useful when tankers come from afar. With land-based tankers, turnaround times of 30 to 60 minutes are not uncommon. When they return to the fire scene after loading-up, the entire situation has changed: the fire has moved, the set of aircraft are different, maybe the winds have changed. Software-based drop assignment allows tankers to optimize their approach from many miles out, leading to more accurate drops and less waste.
The system also features an ad-hoc wireless network that gives a lot of value in air attack situations. This is a self-forming, self-healing network that allows any aircraft to connect with each other anywhere, anytime, even at the North Pole if desired.
When two aircraft come within range of each other, they connect. Each additional aircraft adds to the cluster of systems communicating. It also means that they stay connected, even when an aircraft leaves the cluster of aircraft around a fire, since the system is not dependent on any one aircraft being there. If there's a ground unit, it becomes part of the cluster, too, and adds to the robustness of the network.
Another advantage is that each system acts as a repeater, which yields two important benefits:
An aircraft only needs to be in range of one aircraft to get the information from all the aircraft in the cluster, and
If two aircraft can't connect directly, they can connect through a third aircraft or ground unit. (Similarly, ground units can connect through an aircraft.)
This proves to be useful in situations of complicated terrain. For example, if a helicopter is on the ground below the tree line and a tanker is inbound a mile away skimming over the trees, any direct wireless connection would prove to be difficult. With a proper communications system, they can reliably connect through a third aircraft overhead.
Notably, self-forming ad-hoc networks, by definition, do not rely on existing infrastructures. Related operational costs, which grow proportionally to the amount of data transferred, are therefore completely removed, an important consideration in an environment where soaring fire costs are under increasing scrutiny.
Ontario currently has this system installed in two Aero Commander bird-dog air attack aircraft, two CL-415 tankers, two Twin Otter tankers, and two helicopters (an EC130 and B2). A ground unit is installed at the fire center in Sudbury, Ontario, to test the air-ground connection. Last year Ontario tested the system in five aircraft, which resulted in almost 400 hours of system time and valuable feedback that led to user-driven system improvements.
Mark Lengies is a former air attack pilot. He currently is the CEO of 9G Wireless Inc.
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