Wildfire!
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in visualisation, FiRe, Google on
Driving from San Diego to Silicon Valley up the 101, we passed an airfield where helicopters were loading up with water and fire retardants. They were helping to control a wildfire in the Santa Cruz mountains, where dry bush had been burning for nearly six days. I knew what they were doing, and why, as I’d just had a crash course in California’s fire problems.
Back in San Diego, at FiRe, I spent some time listening in to a group of CTOs and other tech luminaries trying to come up with an improved IT architecture for fire fighters dealing with wildfires. Inspired by the response to 2007’s disastrous fire season, science fiction author and TV presenter David Brin presented a panel from all sides of the tech industry with a challenge from the local supervisor.
The panel included Larry Smarr, the head of UCSD’s super computuing visualisation lab. He had experience of helping coordinate volunteer imaging specialists during the fires, and of using the university’s IT resources to help disseminate information. The panel was joined by two local subject matter experts - one of whom was a fire chief who’d had to put his own men in the path of the fire to help track the source of the flames.
It turns out that San Diego has a lot of the basic infrastructure needed to build an effective fire detection and warning system - including sensors on mountain tops in risky areas. What’s really needed are a way of increasing sensor coverage at times of maximum risk - and of pinpointing fires directly. Information also needs to be routed to help support decisions that need to be made quickly - and presented in a manner that makes sense. Visualisation tools are important here, as they can bring information from multiple sensors and display it in an easy to understand manner alongside appropriate geographic information.
Two days weren’t enough to solve the problem, but plenty of good ideas made their way into an overall system diagram. FiRe’s brains trust may not have prevented the next round of fires, but some of its ideas will go back to the team at UCSD - as well as to the local fire departments. San Diego may not yet use airships to spot fires, but better image processing and improved sensors could go a long way to saving lives and property.
San Diego’s fires also made it to this week’s Google IO (our San Francisco destination). In a presentation on Google Earth, it tutned out that a local radio station used Google’s tools to create an impromptu early warning system on its web sites. Fire reports were plotted on a map, and used to help predict the likely trajectory of the wildfire.
Imaging and visualisation are critical technologies. We’re visual animals, and a well designed image can compress huge amounts of information into very few lines. Appropriate imaging (if it’s on UCSD’s super computers, or on Google Earth) is a powerful decision support tool - and one that in the face of wildfires most certainly saves lives.
Rated: 80% (1 votes)
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