What role can drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) play in early detection? Are there specialized sensors or thermal imaging techniques that can be deployed to identify wildfires in their early stages, especially in remote or inaccessible areas?
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Not sure the juice is worth the squeeze considering we have the fire guard program, and you are talking about back country scenarios that dont impact humans long after the sun comes up and we figure it out by our other means available to us.
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Iām intrigued by the fire guard program you mentioned. I recently joined a project that utilizes NLP models for early wildfire detection, specifically focused on alerting people about possible fires in California along with their locations. I believe our work could potentially contribute to the programās efforts. Is there a way for us to explore collaboration or participate in the program?
Contact Sean Triplett. There is a link on this website towards the bottom.
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2024 Drone Incursions
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You gotta see this!
My inner Wx nerd had to share this content. Its really quite amazing & beautiful & frightening.
It makes me thankful that the Holocene has been a mostly āquietā Wx regime for my lifetime - very relieved that extreme events donāt happen on a diurnal basis every day of the year!!
#stormchase #supercells #tornado #convection&lightning
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As a fellow Wx geek and UAS student pilot Iāve seen lots of drone and tornado videos. This one, however, is worthy of a watch. It was very interesting and had shots and angles Iāve never seen before. Very well made and put together. Definitely appreciate the suggestion.
Because of the inherent and critical necessity of deconfliction to maintain aircraft and personal safety and maintaining an operational airspace during wildland fires, we may never get an opportunity to study wind and fire dynamics that create physics in chaos from the same vantage point. If it could ever be orchestrated under safe and controlled conditions we would probably learn that we need to revise some/many of our thoughts on ember cast, long range ember transport, fluid dynamics, and the chaos of physics large fires create.
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100% down with what you are saying! Your words make me reflect on ārecentā fires where there was documented 41 mile runs,10 mile runs & 40,000 acres in a day fire behavior - sure woulda/coulda been enlightening to have those high energy release moments captured from new angles and vantage points for further study! Makes me also wonder what Albini & Rothermel would have done with drones and how it might have contributed to changes in the fire spread equation/fire spread model that we still use today.
In one of Albiniās papers from 1984 he noted;
āThe list of poorly understood phenomena can be expected to lengthen for some time to come because research in this field is still in its infancy. As the base of knowledge grows, new puzzles will emerge, and explanations that were once accepted will be challenged as their implications are explored.ā
This makes me wonder what ānew puzzlesā might be exposed if drones could be used in those off limits places & what if any current paradigms might their observations challenge?
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we have a tactical drone on every one of our engines at my agency. Its been a cool program, trying to get it to the point that its just like a chainsaw, takes training but can be used safely.
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Iām curious what a āTacticalā drone is used for on the fire ground?
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Search and rescue, hotspot map post mop effectiveness like your own IR map for a wildland fire, hazmat, powerlines down, swiftwater rescue. General situational awareness.
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Me being a career wildland guy but having been through a fire academy 2.5 decades ago, the all hazard responses hadnāt crossed my mind.
Thank you for filling that gap of knowledge!
Do all of the drone operators within the dept have their part 107?
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Not all of them. We have our own COA and moving to a COW. Non 107 pilots currently no night ops no BVLOS but moving that way with our new COW. The only issues is they cant fly outside of the city so move to get all of our hazmat 107 so we can use that on regional responses. 107 pilots can fly anywhere.
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Is there a trained pilot on each engine? How are they trained? Is this something where an individual FF can go get certified somewhere? Is the training required, say for promotional needs? I find this interesting as flying a drone seems complicated to me. But then, hooking up a VCR or a personal computer seemed complex the first couple times I had to do it.
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These kids play video games, kids fly drones at the park, this is not difficult I promise and we are not racing them and flying them through a hoola hoop either lol. Most of it very slow flight. Get it to 200 feet point the camera down for the most part you are not going to hit anything.
We had to file with the FAA with our training curriculum. We do not force anyone to be a pilot its by choice, there is no pay incentive, we are trying to make it just like any other tool on the rig. I use chainsaw because there are hazards with it but with training you can use it safely on a pitched roof with fire below you and not wearing chaps (if osha only knew lol).
Our 107 pilots we do an online commercial course.
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Haha kidsā¦are they all kids to us nowā¦LOL
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Yeah its interesting when your own children are older than the rookies on your rig lol.
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Iām sure you have FF AJ that are younger than we were back in the day when āBig Head Ed & The Reverend Walkerā were kicking both our asses and we both became better for said ass kickingš
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