To build trust, we (they) could explicitly find out and acknowledge the fears of people going into this.. from privacy, to claims of AI decisions response and legal accountability, to the voices of on-the-ground firepeople going unheard while folks like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, NASA and NOAA and so on dehumanize and deculturize our relationship in communities with wildfire. Those are just fears I can conceive of, I’m sure there are others out there. My own experience, with genetically engineered plants, was that people developed them without considering fears and then tried to overcome fears at the end of the process by talking more. When they could easily have been designed with those factors in mind, leading to quicker implementation (and better relationships). It also has to do with silos- what seems to be a great solution in one silo is not so great considering the whole picture.
As Anon.R.One stated in his comments:
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.
Conceivably a system of coordination of efforts could be designed with a USG review process involving a team of users. We already know how to do this.. think FIA.
I bolded a few of A’s sentences.
Here are more of Anon.R.One’s comments:
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.
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.
Here’s a link to a story on FireGuard
I’d only add philanthropists, NGO’s, and researchers to that list.
There have to be models out there for user-directed technology development in terms of prioritizing, reviewing, independent field testing and so on. other than FIA.
Putting the cart before the horse.
One over arching federal entity to address wildland fire on the unclaimed public domain managed by Interior and USDA-USFS is the opportunity to have a plan and room to operate and institute a national plan to limit fire in the unclaimed public domain and prevent such fire from harming the private sector, and the States’ lands governed or managed for the benefit of schools in common statewide, and protecting the ever decreasing land base for growing and harvesting the renewable resource of wood fiber, summer graze so small ranches might use their fee simple to grow hay for winter feeding on their private land, a process that has removed annual fine fuels and provided vigor in the green-up each spring and summer.
There are no renewable iron ore mines. Only recycled iron which is a huge resource. There are no renewable oil wells, coal seams, flaming gases. I can drive Western Oregon right now and point out the trucks depositing sewage solids on grass seed fields as needed nutrients which keeps the material recycled. My town sends water from the sewage lagoon from Lumpy Lake to irrigation linears on non potable crops. No tropical rice paddies here so the high tech disposal of brown water from sewage and storm water run off.
The original intent of having the USFS manage parts of the unclaimed public domain, the lands acquired by conquest, the setting of the border between the US and the provinces of Canada, with Mexico. The Louisiana Purchase of the Mississippi watershed from France by Napoleon to finance war in Europe. The USFS as a part of the Department of Agriculture was the vision that saw the need to conserve timber and timberlands. The beginnings of the ideas from France and Germany that governments could log trees and plant trees in their place to have a sustainable resource to supply national needs. The US lost its way on that front. Now the USFS is dedicated to being the ideological Central Park for America. And the agency the Grand Master of Landscape Ecology and we are living with the outcome of now unaffordable housing for the middle class that is the bulwark of actual and economic freedom. Add the annual resource losses, public and private, wildland fire costs the US government zero. Taxpayers pay the bills or Treasury writes checks the US now pays a trillion dollars of interest on the national debt. None of that pays ghost day care children. Nor does it help one ghost autistic child. It certainly cannot pay under employed to pick sticks and pile them to burn in winter to reduce fuels, pay for fuel and food for needy families with no scams and not immersed in moral turpitude.
I pick up the paper, turn on the tv, and what I see is a boiling pot of “abandon hope all ye who enter here.” Timid leaders everywhere but in the White House and that in year 2 of 4 with “Lameduckery” under fire to be used to advance socialism despite a government too large to prevent what my economic theory says strips 35% of the GDP to waste and abuse, to corporate, personal and government interests, in the process as our government attempts to provide for “a more perfect union , establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the Blessings of Libery to ourselves and our posterity.”
All of which leaves me with doubt that we are still able to self govern and avoid totalitarian strife. When Mayors and Governors can tell the US Government to “get the hell out of my” city, state, does our Constitution still define who we are or is it now “were?”
I believe that before technology is addressed, the national conversation needs to be a common national goal. “Unintended ignitions” as “opportunity” to increase the forest land area “treated to reduce fuels.” Sort of like Oppenheimer fearful the atomic bomb would be commonly used for “urban renewal” with a new landowner. “We had to destroy the village to save the village from fire.” A single central fire operation nationwide and no administrative offices for USFS west of Salt Lake City.
Fly over western states now have zero influence while a third or more of their landscapes are federal lands. As are from 3 miles west of the littoral to 197 miles west to sea also federally regulated. The new Hong Kong and likely to have a similar future if the NYC elected leadership is the harbinger for what lies ahead for rural America in light of the now tyrannical urban majority.
There is little technology that fights wilderness and roadless fire. I wish the federal fire apparatus had the same mentality as our return to War Department from the failed Defense Department. The stance is now on our toes, a far cry from being on our heels. That is what is needed in Wildland fire leadership. A
will to get the job done. Then we will have a resource to protect with new and more technology.