Space-Age Aerial Device Could Change the Way Firefighters Work
Published in: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Date: 12/1/2003
By: Gilbert Chan
Dec. 1–ENCINITAS, Calif. — Only hours after the devastating Cedar wildfire erupted in San Diego County, Philip Riggan boarded a specially equipped twin-engine Piper Navajo airplane and headed toward the inferno.
Some 17,000 feet above the flames, the plane sailed over thick plumes of smoke as Riggan sat behind a flat-screen computer monitor observing infrared images of the white-hot flames racing out of control and threatening people and their homes.
“It was incredible. We went right along the (fire) line. It keep going and going,” said Riggan, a fire scientist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station.
Using a revolutionary thermal infrared camera, Riggan provided firefighters with a detailed map showing the wide swath of destruction cut by the wildfire.
“You can see where the fire line is in real time. The better intelligence you have, the better decisions you make. It has some real safety benefits for the firefighters on the ground,” said George Motschall, assistant director of fire and aviation management for the U.S. Forest Service in Riverside. He helped coordinate the firefighting efforts last month in Southern California.
Within 90 minutes after the images were taken, fire officials used the data to direct strike teams and air drops as well as coordinate evacuations. They would stop the Cedar fire after it had burned 280,000 acres.
For the first time, firefighters and the public were able to log onto the Internet and monitor the progress of actual wildfires. Authorities and developers of the space-age system say it could change how wildfires are fought as well as how charred wild lands are nursed back to health.
“This will take (fire science) to the 21st century,” said Riggan. Up to now, fire intelligence gathering was stuck in the 1950s, with scientists relegated to using bulky, expensive infrared equipment to produce poor images from the sky.
The new high-tech FireMapper 2.0 system, developed in a joint venture between the Forest Service and Space Instruments in Encinitas, was used extensively to map the wildfires that swept through San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Ventura counties, burning some 660,000 acres and killing 22 people.
Buoyed by its results, Space Instruments now is poised to market the $250,000 infrared camera to private companies and government agencies worldwide. In addition to wildfires, the FireMapper can be used to track oil spills and develop flood control and forest management plans.
“We’re building the first four and taking orders now,” said James Hoffman, co-owner and founder of Space Instruments. “We’ve been working on this for 10 years. Everyone else is using the old technology.
“There’s a market out there for hundreds of these. The people in Europe are interested in using this for oil mapping.”
Hoffman, who worked for Raytheon for nine years, founded Space Instruments in 1981. He initially worked as a subcontractor on infrared imaging projects to major defense contractors such as TRW, Raytheon and Rockwell International. The company later became primary contractor, developing specialized infrared sensors for the Defense Department and NASA, including one for the space shuttle Discovery in 1997.
For the past five years, it has worked with the Forest Service on the FireMapper project to help the government map fires and natural disasters. Under the joint venture, “the government is getting what it wants. We’re developing a product line,” Hoffman said.
With 15 employees divided between Encinitas and Fort Collins, Colo., Space Instruments does everything in-house — from writing the software to the tooling and manufacturing. It also has developed a high-resolution camera called the ForestMapper, now used to monitor the health of the Amazon rain forest.
Space Instruments and the Forest Service and other government agencies have invested an estimated $3 million in developing the 7-pound, aluminum-encased infrared camera, which is based on military night-vision technology. Hoffman said the FireMapper is lighter and more compact than other systems, which can weigh up to 300 pounds and cost up to $1 million.
Unlike others, this unit has fewer moving parts and operates at room temperature without requiring liquid nitrogen to cool the sensors. Older infrared technology produced black-and-white images and less detail.
Mounted on an airplane or helicopter, the Space Instruments system is composed of the infrared camera unit, a Global Positioning System, a small telephone satellite transmitter and a notebook-size computer. The device can see through smoke and dust and record an image picked up from the heat generated on the ground, something conventional cameras can’t do.
“Everything is covered with smoke. You can’t see anything. You don’t know where the fire is,” Hoffman said.
During a fire, an airplane will pass over the fire numerous times while the infrared camera records a steady stream of images at a clip of 64 times per second.
The images are transmitted to a satellite and then beamed to Earth, where a computer operator uses custom software to piece together the individual images and overlay them on a topographical map.
The result is a detailed three-dimensional map showing roads, streams, mountains, canyons and ridges, the burned-out vegetation and the progress of the fire. The color-coded maps also show the heat intensity and date and time the images were shot.
The fire map is posted on the Internet for fire officials as well as the public to view and analyze. The images are now available in an hour to 90 minutes, but company leaders hope to cut processing time to 20 minutes or less.
“We get a real good definition of the fire,” said Riggan, the lead fire scientist for the infrared camera project. “You can deduce the rate of movement of the fire. We can produce something really readable for the fire service people. We are learning new things on how fires behave.
“We’re really trying to improve how operations are done. We want the technology available for every major fire (agency).”
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