UCSD WIFIRE Monitoring on Coulson Firewatch S-76

Coulson, July 23, 2019 - Coulson Aviation USA, part of Coulson Group of Companies, has added a new component to the helicopter night firefighting operations in Orange County, California.

A 45-foot Prevost Command Center that hosts team members of Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA) and Coulson will provide the University of California San Diego (UCSD) WIFIRE Lab program real-time fire maps being produced from the S-76 Firewatch helicopter while over the fire.

The UCSD Supercomputer will forecast where the fire direction is predicted to go and identify for fire leadership the risks and hazards for firefighters and communities.

Utilizing a key integration team member is Intterra whom Coulson, OCFA and WIFIRE will be working with to move the intelligence gathering information to the proper leadership.

“I appreciate and thank Chief Fennessy for the coordination and leadership he has provided to integrate this multi-faceted technology package into building a safer workplace for our firefighters and flight crews while providing greater protection for our communities,” said Wayne Coulson, CEO, Coulson Aviation.

Natural hazards monitoring

UCSD WIFIRE Lab develops integrated systems for natural hazards monitoring, simulation, and response. They do this by building knowledge cyberinfrastructures: the end-to-end management layer from the data collection to modeling efforts to data driven knowledge.

WIFIRE Lab grew out of an National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project (CI, Information Technology Research and SEES Hazards programs) where they grew their passion for understanding the coupled dynamics of changing urbanization, climate, and earth surface processes.

Firemap is a tool developed by WIFIRE researchers to perform data-driven predictive modeling and analysis of fires that have a high potential for rapid spread, and enables what-if analysis of fire scenarios ahead of the time as well as real-time fire forecasting.

It also provides easy access to information on past fires, past and current weather conditions as well as weather forecasts, satellite detections, and information on vegetation and landscapes from a variety of sources. These are all datasets available on different websites that viewers can now see in one place, achieve programmatic access to via web services, and be used for planning fire response and management of natural resources well ahead of time.