Google Earth Helps Track Wildfires
Google Earth Helps Track Wildfires
01 April 2010
published by www.livescience.com
USA — The NSF-funded High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN) provides communications and other support for an emergency response aircraft maintained by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).
During fires, this aircraft is used for fire reconnaissance, as well as to direct the water or fire-retardant airdrops of lower flying, fixed-wing tankers and helicopters. The MIT Lincoln Laboratory has installed a camera and air-ground communications system on the aircraft. This system is able to stream video with both infrared- and visible-light capability, with the steerable camera mounted underneath the aircraft.
A tracking antenna on a gimbal, located on a centrally-located mountaintop, is able to follow the airplane. The HPWREN team developed tools to better control the tracking antenna, as well as to assess and graph flight-related parameters, such as radio signal quality, geo-location of the aircraft, and traffic volume exchanged across air-ground communications.
The image shows a visualization reflecting the HPWREN data. This image is related to wildland fire activities in Southern California. For more background, see Enhanced Situational Awareness for First Responders, which also includes videos and other images, including one of a related wildland fire.
To accomplish the data collection, a multicast stream emanating from the radios in the air and on the mountaintop is converted to an HPWREN-compatible format and captured at a server at UCSD’s San Diego Supercomputer Center. A converter program then translates the files into KML objects to be displayed in tools such as Google Earth. This allows for a detailed examination of the parameters with high time-resolution, while the multicast stream itself supports real-time assessments.
The team is currently evaluating the lessons learned during the 2009 fire season, in order to be ready for 2010.
HPWREN, entering its tenth year of existence, has been collaborating with firefighters and other emergency personnel in a variety of ways, including connecting Incident Command Posts for major fires, connecting fire camps and fire stations, providing imagery via a substantial number of high-resolution environmental cameras, and making real-time and archived sensor data available. Some of the real-time meteorological sensor data is automatically processed, and triggers pager and emailed alarms to emergency responders during Santa Ana weather conditions.
