Thanks again to Nick Smith for this link! Apparently the folks at Rand have figured out something I wrote about a long time ago…I’d only add that I’ve seen companies jockeying for federal and state funding for their technology- and without some centralized review process funding could fall victim to “good folks in my district” pork-diffusion. Personally, I have more warm fuzzy feelings about DOE than military and intelligence models. Because.. well.. transparency and accountability lead to trust. From the LA Times op-ed.
Yes it’s true.. big government fund channels and philanthropic funding channels have entered what has traditionally been more or less “our” wildfire space. We (and our science and tech) are likely to become minnows to their sharks, accept these new entrants with some kind of grace, and yet maintain our very important land and boots on the ground-related seat at the table. I hope there are folks at the new USWFS thinking about all this. My worry would be that all the excellent on-the-ground research done by Forest Service R&D would get subsumed into the NASA/NOAA and associated contractor funding ecosystem.. more Lockheed Martin and less Missoula Tech Center.
These tools can’t eliminate wildfire, nor should they, because fire is a part of healthy ecosystems. But they can reduce wildfire’s destructive potential. They can lead to fewer evacuations, fewer neighborhoods lost, fewer lives turned upside down.
So why aren’t they widely deployed?
The United States lacks a coherent system for advancing and scaling wildfire technology innovation. Diverse actors — including federal and state fire and land management agencies, local fire districts, tribal governments, utilities, insurers, research institutions and private companies — operate under different authorities, budgets, procurement rules and data systems. Innovators who want to help don’t always know where to go. Philanthropies fund pilot programs, not adoption at scale. Fire agencies struggle to test or purchase new and unproven technologies.
And yet we have examples of what effective innovation can look like. Within the U.S. military the Defense Innovation Unit identifies promising commercial technologies and helps the services field them within a year or two. At the federal Department of Energy the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy identifies high-risk, high-reward technologies related to power generation, transmission and storage. In‑Q‑Tel, a nonprofit created by the Central Intelligence Agency, uses a venture capital model to invest in commercial technologies needed by intelligence and national security agencies.
None of these organizations invented every technology they advanced. Their success came from creating connective tissue. In a recent study, colleagues and I looked at how the models that led to those successes could help strengthen the wildfire technology innovation pipeline.
Wildfire needs its own version of a federal coordination entity dedicated to connecting innovators, funders, researchers, fire agencies, utilities and communities. As a neutral coordinator, such an entity could scan emerging technologies for broad situational awareness; establish shared standards to support interoperability; assist with testing and adoption to strengthen buy-in by end users; help innovators and state and local agencies navigate procurement challenges; and provide targeted funding to accelerate deployment. It also could ensure that innovators and investors look beyond headline-grabbing fire-suppression tools and instead toward mitigation and prevention technologies that can save lives and money in the long run.
Land management, controlled burns, updated building codes and community planning all remain essential. Technology can make those efforts more effective. It can give firefighters better information and residents more warning. It can help communities to avoid disaster or, failing that, to recover faster.
Some states, utilities and federal agencies already are pushing innovation. For example the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as CAL Fire, created a new Office of Wildfire Technology Research and Development. Colorado created a center of excellence to bring innovation to aerial firefighting.
But without national coordination, progress remains uneven. Communities with fewer resources risk falling further behind.
The anniversary of the L.A. wildfires is a reminder of what is at stake. Americans have transformed public risk systems before — in national security, earthquake preparedness, hurricane forecasting and aviation safety — through coordination and smart investment. Wildfire should be next.
Patrick S. Roberts is a senior political scientist at Rand and an author of the recent report “Accelerating Technological Innovation Across the U.S. Wildfire Management System.”
Here are the report’s key findings and recommendations:
Key Findings
- The wildfire management cycle spans prevention, preparedness, response and suppression, and recovery, but most attention and resources go toward suppression.
- The wildfire technology innovation system is polycentric and complex. Authority is distributed among federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, private, and nonprofit actors.
- The innovation system consists of innovators, accelerators, and users of technologies, but few accelerators provide funding, share information, and provide opportunities for pilot testing. The lack of accelerators limits innovations from being developed and adopted at scale.
- The innovation system’s strengths are its many innovators, multiple paths for funding and innovation, and its committed individual champions.
- Its weaknesses are the silos that limit coordination, fragmented and primarily small-scale budgets for new technologies that do not support larger or long-term projects at scale, and markets and incentives that skew toward suppression technologies. These three limitations, in turn, create a variety of challenges faced by innovators and users of technologies.
- The system’s fragmentation impedes coordination, and its constrained resources — especially for investments in things other than suppression technologies — make it difficult to invest in large-scale technological advances where the market is uncertain or long term.
- Innovation agencies from other sectors provide lessons for addressing the fragmentation and resource constraints of the wildfire technology innovation system.
- The research literature offers three governance models for innovation networks: a shared-governance consortium model, a lead-organization model, and a coordinator or network administrative organization (NAO).
Recommendations
- Create a wildfire innovation NAO to coordinate innovators, accelerators, and users and accelerate the transition of promising technologies from early development to adoption and scale across the full wildfire management cycle.
- Ensure that the NAO has a stakeholder board, a federal funding anchor, and the ability to receive philanthropic funds.
- Have the NAO conduct the following activities: Span boundaries, build communities of interest, scan technology horizons, provide nonfinancial technology transition support, make or attract reputable investors to inspire others, directly fund research and development, provide funding via problem-focused prizes, and balance the investment portfolio to ensure that mitigation and preparedness technologies receive support.
I have researched ALL aspects of wildfires for over 5 years.
I have developed, and built a prototype system to simulate a helicopter.
My approach was SCIENTIFIC, and I used the SCIENTIFIC method, AND, the approach of detective search for evidence.
I have a patent.
I have conducted controlled tests, with witnesses, that extinguished a controlled fuel source [various sized branches], to put out the fire in less than 0.5sec. NO EMBERS. I am a retired aeronautical engineer; chief engineer of F15 INERTIAL GUIDANCE; also augmented destroyer and submarine guidance; also redesigned the SR-71 STARTRACKER, AND MORED
I have researched ALL aspects of wildfires for over 5 years.
I have developed, and built a prototype system to simulate a helicopter.
My approach was SCIENTIFIC, and I used the SCIENTIFIC method, AND, the approach of detective search for evidence.I have a patent.
I have conducted controlled tests, with witnesses, that extinguished a controlled fuel source [various sized branches], to put out the fire in less than 0.5sec. NO EMBERS. I am a retired aeronautical engineer; chief engineer of F15 INERTIAL GUIDANCE; also augmented destroyer and submarine guidance; also redesigned the SR-71 STARTRACKER, AND MORE!
I am communicating with 2 helicopter companies; Also; cf: Rick Goddard; CAYLYM GUARDIAN SYSTEM; (559)358-5510
I think I’ll broadly agree with Rand’s key findings here. Certainly no disagreement with the funding emphasis on suppression and gravitation toward headline-grabbing ideas. My subsequent complain will mostly focus on suppression as well. As an end user, the hype surrounding new products, applications, and technologies is highly frustrating.
The past few years there has been a steady push to develop ‘real-time’ ignition detection of wildfires using satellites and AI. We finally got to test this product last field season. It was non-functional in mountainous timber (both false positives and numerous known fires not being located), maybe it does better in open grasslands or shrubs. Yes, the product is still being developed, however advocates declared how simple and easy it would be pull off. Conversely, it appears that newer AI-linked camera systems have been pretty effective at detection, or at least helpful. We don’t need 6 tools that all sort of do 60% of one job, just one that does 95+ will suffice.
This past season crews also got to work with a ‘smart tank’ (I tried finding an online example, but couldn’t). The smart tank is essentially a porta-tank/folda-tank with a pump that is dropped off by a helicopter intended to be used remotely away from a water source on a large incident. Sounds like a decent enough idea. But it is also intended to be filled by a helicopter. So in practice the tank gets dropped off and the helicopter returns to fill it up with a bucket, possibly flying past the area of heat, then dumps a load of water into the tank whereby much of the water sloshes out as water dropping from a 100 feet up will do. Ultimately this leaves the tank never more than half full and turns into a waste of resources. Just have the helicopter do trailing drops… or save $40k+ a day and send it away and let the crews mop up.
Often the problem (long running issue at that) for suppression is moving large quantities of water uphill. It seems the water needed to extinguish a fire are often underestimated, thus energy demands are underestimated. Another recurring issue is the one-size-fits-all approach. Just because something works in on locale, doesn’t mean it can be easily applied across the country. The success of internet/cell connectivity dependent technologies is also highly location dependent and often this seems to not be realized by technology developer types.
MTDC has created custom products for us that have very limited national appeal or scalability. This has been a great resource and should continue to be funded. A change that I would welcome would be the adoption of the Canadian Quick Connect hose fittings but this certainly isn’t headline grabbing or riling up investors.
My point here is that it seems innovator/investor groups often underestimate the true needs and are in a hurry to get something out the door to secure a contract and make that money. There’s an impression that these groups are here to tell the people on the ground what they need and why their product solves some unknown problem, as opposed to listening to existing issues.
Apologies for this being heavy on feelings/seems/impressions.
Probably the biggest ‘innovation’ on the suppression side over the last five to 10 years has been the adoption of existing military technology for detection and reconnaissance. Fire managers saw products from overseas operations and realized it would be pretty useful in suppression and pushed for access. This resulted in better detection capabilities, real-time reconnaissance, and perimeter mapping.
Likely the second biggest change has been with the UAS program. Again fire managers recognized the technology existed and they thought it could be helpful. Managers went to drone manufactures asking the manufactures to create or modify drones to accomplish specific tasks.
While it has more limited uses, the California National Guard FireGuard program is pretty neat to follow.
Point being, ask fire managers what they need, not what the politicians and venture capitalists think managers need.