The growth of technology is marked by its feverish pace and groundbreaking developments. New advancements affect war and the militarization of societies, fueling the “industry of death” according to some, while operating as a form of salvation for others, producing justice, democracy, and peace. Technology is ever-revolutionizing. In recent years, it has become more advanced, and wildfire suppression techniques have made use of them for this purpose. Forest firefighting, the act of preventing the expansion of forest fires, is vital since it provides people with the assurance that they will be safe from danger. To avoid the danger of being consumed by the flames of the wildfire, humans spend a significant amount of time and resources on extinguishing it. It is cheaper, safer, and less dangerous to use unplugged hoses than to rely on canals or flows of water to convey water resources.
1. Introduction
A crucial approach in fighting wildfires is the use of support aircraft, including both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. Initially, they can be used to survey and battle larger blazes, acting as initial assault jumpers, keeping the blaze small and manageable until more resources arrive. Support aircraft can pour retardant, water, or fire suppression chemicals on a fire, slowing its spread and reducing its intensity. They can also transport tools and personnel to begin fighting the blaze on the ground. In the realm of environmental conservation of widespread interest, however, is the extent to which the rapid advance of technology is having on the terrestrial conservation of the planet.
1.1. Overview of Forest Fires
In addition to providing an understanding of the potential benefits of advancing the technologies used to fight wildland fires – the topic of this paper – a basic understanding of wildland fire behavior is also important. For fire to start and burn, three basic elements must be present: heat, oxygen, and a burnable or “fuel” source. The presence of these three elements in the wildland-urban interface defines the potential for fire-related disasters. Various characteristics of the fuel, topography, weather, and fire patterns can influence the rate at which fires progress, thus influencing how a fire will be fought and, ultimately, how much damage it inflicts.
Because the fire triangle is dynamic, fire can often become unpredictable. There are many different factors that influence wildland fire behavior. Griggs (1974) lists the following as the most important factors that influence fire behavior: the “fire environment” (including the fuels, terrain, and weather); the produce ash bed very slick and may serve as a temporary means of the lower atmospheric layers.”10 The authors acknowledged that dense smoke alone has “a smaller effect” in cooling fuel surfaces and reducing the radiant heat exposure that plays a role in preheating adjacent unburned fuels. Friday arguments can be extended to undesirable smoke forecast inconspicuous from high-intensity, forest fires that are often characterized by deep vertical plumes. behavior of fire itself; and changing fuel characteristics as the fire burns and consumes the available fuel.
2. Traditional Methods of Forest Firefighting
Before the age of advanced technologies, putting out a forest fire was difficult and dangerous, as there were many uncontrollable events while trying to extinguish a wildfire. To understand the changes in firefighting methods, it is necessary to look at the traditional working methods from the past. Firefighting strategies and methods vary in different parts of the world, with each country having its own approach. The following is a list of traditional methods and a brief description of how they were used:
– Digging a fire border and a buffer zone. – Lighting counters or stretching the boundaries of the fire. Controlled forest fires have been intentionally set in Canada, USA, and several European countries as a preventive measure against frequent fires. – Taking early action to prevent and contain fires that are beyond control. Weather patrols at intelligence airports are used for fire detection. – Most detection methods involve observing fires from high positions or buildings. Firefighters or fire brigades in countries like the USA and Canada prioritize firefighting efforts and protecting the forests. Fire attack. Firefighting is considered an important function of National Forestry Institutions in Asian countries. – Most field assistants (fire guards, patrol officers, and foresters) have the ability to respond to forest fires in their respective areas. Their performance is crucial in extinguishing potential forest fires, which can be extremely challenging and require experience and special skills. In other parts of the world, the importance given to battle support in forest fires varies due to institutional differences. – Fire suppression and immediate containment of fires in the center of the fire are necessary to extinguish forest fires. Water bombing is used, where helicopters and planes spray water on the affected areas. These aircraft are designed for maneuvering at low speeds and dropping water and materials accurately.
It is evident that the situation has changed significantly since then.
2.1. Firebreaks and Controlled Burns
When fighting fires in remote and rural areas, a common method of stopping a fire from spreading is to use firebreaks, which are cleared lines that create a physical barrier preventing the spread of fire to the other side. The purpose of a firebreak is to control and direct fires, clearing out dry brush or other highly flammable materials before they can become involved in a significant way with a passing wildland fire, in effect making more wildland fire-containable ground. These cleared areas can be made manually with axes and other tools or in some cases can be made by a small bulldozer or other heavy machinery depending on the remote area you are in.
Another important counteractive method that has been used for hundreds of years is called a controlled burn, where fires are strategically set with hopes to starve off a larger wildfire. As well as managing vegetation, controlled burns can reduce the intensity and size of wildfires. Controlled burning stimulates the regeneration of important species or natural fire regimes like grassland and savanna. A controlled burn can appear as a smoky fire but not necessarily with a highly visible flame that a wildfire would produce. A large amount of fuel is treated and the controlled burn can have an associated global impact.
Manually setting fires should obviously be done by professional individuals or groups as it is incredibly dangerous work because sudden changes in weather can have catastrophic side effects if the fire were to spread. This form of counteractive method is mostly used to sequester some of the fire hazards rather than put out the entire fire. It essentially outcompetes the larger fire with a smaller, more manageable fire, which can be easier to extinguish.
3. Advanced Technologies in Forest Firefighting
Forest firefighting has significantly changed over the years thanks to advanced technology. The principles behind firefighting have remained the same, even though the equipment and tools used have been updated, as is usual for any manual activity. Forest firefighting involved gas and water fire pumps before the invention of motorized fire pumps. It was also before the invention of modern hoses. Forest firefighting is no longer the accurate art it once was. These kinds of advancements in technology have impacted everything and in the process of extinguishing forest fires and other kinds of fires, have real applications now. In the following passages, we will investigate various tools and technology which are applied in the arena of flames and forest firefighting.
Drones are pretty useful for forest fires and a completely important advancement in the field of forest firefighting. In other terms, firefighting for drones utilizing intellect is known as a ‘smart solution’ for combating threats. Back in 2013, a hexacopter was developed by a group from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich which was specially designed to assist in putting out forest fires. Reports suggest that drones can actually behave responsibly in order to cover some subject that is somehow inaccessible from any other angle. The author have driven to the conclusion that individuals needed drones to learn everything about a wildfire in California’s city surrounding, and to locate sources of data inaccessible via an alternate angle.
3.1. Drones and UAVs
There’s been a long history of using drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for wildfire applications. They are primarily used for real-time situational awareness, tracking fire progression, and, more importantly, tracking the vegetation and forests around those areas. They can be used for identifying problem spots such as hotspots, managing perimeters, and delivering data more safely. Controlling drones and UAVs involves a variety of control interfaces, along with advanced Artificial Intelligence algorithms for assisting both human decision-making and autonomous control for teams of drones and single drones. One of the prominent constraints in the current UAV technologies is that their operation is mostly limited to short-range.
One of the primary capabilities offered in drones and UAVs is the possibility of running simulations. Simulations are widely used in exploration scenarios, to some extent in forestry fire research, and in evaluating the impact of forestry fires. However, drones offer a more refined simulation model, which can be used to better predict the future of fires in simulations, relative to classical computer algorithms. When paths or the movement of drones changes the SCF (Simplified Coordinate Fire) system in the simulation, it can also aid in predicting or controlling the spread of fire in such scenarios. Essentially, drones and UAVs can be used to scan areas in conjunction with the sensitive SCF, allowing them to be utilized for finer environmental scans.
4. Remote Sensing and GIS Applications
The advent of global positioning systems (GPS), remote sensing satellite imagery, and geographic information systems (GIS) has led to a recent rapid adaptation in their integration and deployment for the monitoring and management of wildland fires. The term geospatial technologies often describe the integration of remote sensing and GIS applications, as well as its further applications in forest management. Wildland and urban interface monitoring, changed-fire-impact-mapping programs, escape route security from fires, fire management and user’s accessibility have become a subject of exploration for fire recovery and adaptive fire management programs, especially in recognizing hot spots. GIS uses spatial data containing attribute information that is stored in databases and analyzed and interpreted with software that the user can choose based on a fire’s pattern and shape. While remote sensing is an art and science – which officially began as early as 1960 – designed to make measurements of the Earth using different sensors aimed to record information from different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, especially those not visible to the naked eye.
The combination of fire behavior and knowledge of the topography and fuels that exist in a specific location can be combined with the capabilities of a global positioning system (GPS) to record the burnt area, the heat of hot spots, and digital fire perimeter data in real time. Since 1970, satellites have been used to monitor fires, but only since the 1990s has this become routine. Indirect negative effects of service quality may include human economic losses or lost opportunities as a result of failed missions, especially if satellite missions are not realized as a result of inaccurate interpretation of remote sensing data or inefficient management. It has been shown that increased financial investment in space programs and the use of remote sensing-based technologies have social potential with respect to forest fire events and the earth in particular.
4.1. Satellite Imagery
Satellite imagery has a variety of applications ranging from the monitoring of water to the tracking of air pollutant levels. Hence, it should come as no surprise that satellite imagery is also used as a high-tech tool in the ongoing visualization of fire activity. It contributes an overview of vegetation occurring at ground level, aerial data on the plume and any changes within it (a strong indicator of fire behavior) and heat production. Goals central to this new technological forest fire fighting should always and often be the earliest possible detection of a new fire and care should be given to those burning slowly with little influence on the ground.
Raw views of fires from above are served, almost in real-time, by many space agencies at the higher resolution – more aircraft activity producers for emergency planning. India’s National Remote Sensing Centre provides updates of fire scars to the Indian Forest Fire Association. Its decision to exclusively show and concentrate on swath satellite imagery – resolvable to only approximately a tenth of a mile – displays the connection between ease of use and from and rapidity of delivery. Another use of satellites is still at the scientific research curve and is designed to continually monitor the damage wrought by fires and evaluate long-term ecosystem recovery.
5. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have played a defining role in the development and implementation of technologies and strategies that have transformed the way humans interact with forest fires. Among the most important of these are data-driven simulations. Much like computational fluid dynamics has been used for fire flow studies in labyrinth buildings, simulating fire expansion and breaks of wildfires in the natural environment has the potential to offer quantitative insights about the relevance of firefighting actions. Avoidance of casualties and economic loss are two benefits of effectively slowing a fire’s spread, usually through retardant application, and more recently by evacuating threatened towns. Here, we reflect on how automated data analysis and predictive capabilities have been used to design massively parallel models that offer strategic advice online, in real-time, to firefighting teams. These platforms are advanced AI tools based on decades of interdisciplinary research and are used to model ‘in situ’ the ongoing wildfires in multiple pilots and reports, informing strategic debriefing.
Nearing the end of fire season, experienced fire simulation teams can model their whole fire systems and review the summer of firefighting technology before a row of big events. This march to high fidelity representation does not forget, however, to test lighter approaches that offer operational, value-led answers that reflect the varied nature of user needs at the regional and local scales. In fact, shorter simulation experiments use far less expert time than strategic debriefing. Shortly after mobile phones took off, wildfire simulation became automated to permit same-day strategic debriefing as it gave users benefits closest to their original needs to use. Operation is medium-term tactics. In turn, other portfolios revealed the grand strategies of planners and the variety of user needs for an operative system approach. This offered well-defined outputs that could go to terrain every day. Over 30 years, Amigo became the strategic engine for 50 users who could pre-register event analysis of wildfires anywhere in the UK. Feedback, in the form of decision cycles and expert discussions, maximum real-time response advice and decisions all informed the duration of what was happening.
5.1. Predictive Modeling
People tend to predict outcomes based on the available information. For example, as we watch a flower grow or a jar of coins fill, we use current information to make predictions about how they will continue to change in the future. Predictions about physical systems are possible thanks to a deep understanding of the forces that act within them. In place of or in addition to that understanding, we can also use data to help predict what will happen in the future. Everyone’s favorite example: the weather. Data collected about the current state of a system (the air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed at your location), as well as about anything that might affect that state (storms off the coast of California that will turn northward toward Oregon), along with a knowledge of the underlying forces (high and low pressure cells that tend to steer storms and warm, dry air into the Willamette Valley), can be used to make predictions about natural events hours and days in advance.
Both physical and data-driven understanding can be used together to make predictions about complex, multivariable systems—like wildfires. Predictions about changes in the weather over the course of a day can be made based on knowledge of patterns in today’s jet stream, but they can also be enhanced by data: trends in wind speed over the course of the last hour can inform predictions about the spread rate of a fire. By the same token, scientists are using data and knowledge of fire behavior to make data-driven predictions, called forecasts, about how accessible a fire in a given location will be to firefighters several hours in the future. This 6-hour forecast shows the predicted “containment probability,” which is the probability that a wildfire will not spread beyond a given area, given that resources are put in place.
6. Robotics and Automation
Emergency services around the world battle with wildfires caused by natural and industrial factors. With the advent of advanced technology, increased understanding of the phenomena that lead to a forest fire and its processes, as well as infrastructure requirements, help in gaining possible intervention. Robotics, as one of the advanced technologies, can provide a solution to minimize human intrusion and untangled effects. Intervention is highly tough in such terrains and involves many natural perils. Increased efforts have been made to automate the systems to tackle the problem of forest firefighting in terms of tools and techniques.
The available system is fully equipped with all necessities, but the firefighting robots without remote intervention are still undergoing ongoing research. Moreover, the designated system with firefighting equipment is to be designed and integrated for different terrains. On the other hand, spoon-like buckets grabbed by robotic arms compatible with Unmanned Aerial Helicopters (UAHs) are used to collect water from swamps and drop it on a fire. The robotic system is used to detect and classify a wall of fire. The whole firefighting operation using a UAV and robotic arm accentuates the autonomy using autonomous control. The state of the art on aerial and terrestrial firefighting robots is also presented. Robotic solutions are preferred rather than human interventions in forest firefighting operations. The present development shows that the aerial robot with its peculiar characteristics demonstrates its appropriateness for such environments where impossible human intervention was recorded. The elbow gripper bucket dropped in UAH is successful in the test.
6.1. Autonomous Vehicles
Based on modern technologies, unmanned (uncrewed) vehicles can ensure high-quality performance by completing tasks for the elimination of natural and man-made emergencies, reducing the risk to the health and lives of rescuers and emergency response personnel. Large transformations have occurred in the last decade, as under the influence of globalization and rapid scientific and technological progress, the transition to the development of technologies and artificially intelligent systems with automatic control based on cutting-edge achievements in the creation of mechatronic systems, robotics, and automatic control systems has undergone an acceleration. Among a wide variety of fundamentally different topics, authors have considered the use of intelligent computer technologies in navigation software to solve the problem of autonomous control of an unmanned aerial vehicle by constraining it to follow a given trajectory under the action of zero and non-zero disturbances. In the presented work, emphasis is placed on the drafts of modern electronic computers and computer technologies in the development of automated systems, where one of the most pressing problems is to ensure the highest quality of work in ensuring cybersecurity using various cutting-edge technologies (artificial intelligence, intelligent video surveillance, and industrial Internet of things), as a result of which automated robots are actively used to conduct search and rescue operations, to conduct direct-fire extinguishing that are actively used and naval fire fighting, to liquidate natural disasters, including floods, cyclones, and their consequences, and to liquidate and prevent technogenic disasters, including aviation and rail accidents, etc., to reduce the impact of these accidents in the transport industry. Surveys and case studies are given in, respectively.
7. Communication and Coordination Systems
Forest firefighters commit to extensive protection methods, but collaboration is difficult in remote, dense forests under high-stress conditions with limited resources. Technological tools could improve this critical area. The usage of networks, advanced sensors, and other information technology tools could potentially provide information that would allow for faster protection of forests at a more affordable price. Several new operational procedures and organizational structures could improve the technology’s economic reality. Cloud computing, information technology, and machine-learning capabilities could be employed in the future. Using large-scale simulations, we show that if technology or management approaches can shorten the time until the first 200 initial attackers arrive on the scene, the destruction of forests is significantly reduced, which reduces costs; however, the implications of these results are not negligible.
When wildfires threaten communities or are ignited by accidents or terrorism, government, private, and volunteer organizations feel obliged to respond and protect human lives, wildlife, and property. However, the interior of a large forest or mountain area is vast and complex. Firefighters and support organizations require valuable communications tools during the fight in real-time. Firefighters often cannot see the enemy, and resources are needed to do that. Thus, real-time plans can only be established through collaboration and communication. Firefighting centers, mobile command posts, local incident command staff, and remote fire managers may be able to utilize wireless communication and information technologies to collaboratively design real-time actions.
7.1. Incident Command Systems
Incident command systems are invaluable at forest fire incidents for supporting decisions and implementing control measures. A wildland coordinator (Ics-coordinator) oversees an incident in these systems. The large number of diverse tasks, duties, and operations that need to be performed during forest fire suppression can be coordinated in the most efficient manner by having a single person ultimately responsible for decision making and resource allocation. In three Australian systems, the primary means of communication with subordinate personnel is through an organized command and control structure. Available evidence suggests that where command structures are well defined in this way, decision-making becomes more streamlined and situations are managed more safely and effectively.
Progress becomes possible that is similar to CCC control theory operations. The use of incident command systems (or their equivalent) to control wildland fires is now generally accepted as good practice. The responsibility for dealing with practically all forest and grassland wildfires in Victoria is with the Forests Commission of Victoria, 1997. The incident command system followed in Victoria is closely modeled on the one followed in the United States. The primary difference is that, for Australia, the system has four different ranks within the system rather than the United States’ three. This structure was recommended by a committee set in 1976 of inquiry into bushfire superstructure which suggested the implementation of a version of the United States forest fire incident command system in Victoria.
8. Challenges and Limitations of Advanced Technologies
For instance, drones and fixed-wing and rotary UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), with their high-tech sensors, have “aerially observed detect-to-dispatch operational readiness, speed and decision advantage” that can improve the safety and efficacy of fire-command structures. Canadian researchers advocate here the accumulation of a comprehensive body of knowledge about technological options and limits, their risks and opportunities for fire management, from the ground in fuel and weather data to “the most advanced infra-red satellite detection of deep burning ground fires through the heavy smoke”. They also suggest a multidisciplinary science not just of “natural drivers of fire ignitions, extent, spread and severity” but of human responses to and impacts on fires, including human uses of science. Some experts, however, stress the importance of low-tech and no-tech dimensions of fire communication and local knowledge, understanding and use of fire and fire science that does not require hi-tech.
The uses of advanced technologies for fire prevention, detection and management have certainly advanced. But they also come with a certain number of challenges and limitations, not only in being indicators of profound social, ecological and cultural change but in symptomatic responses to rapidly increasing problems that are virtually insurmountable through technological solutions. Advanced technologies are seldom cost-effective or even cost-justifiable. They are not always widely available or accessible to those who can benefit most from them, an ongoing issue in peripheries and so-called “undeveloped” areas in many states across the world. They also generally require expert knowledge, investment in infrastructure, ongoing training for personnel and regular reassessment/assessment of the efficacy of the systems. Most monitoring systems offer remote, long-range monitoring at the expense of long-term, in situ, on-the-ground, or “ground truthing” that may be quite detailed and accurate if labor-intensive. We would argue that even if crews have access to such hi-tech, remote-monitoring devices, they rely on “low-tech” forms of participation, training and knowledge of forests, weather, fire, and the local environment and ecology.
8.1. Cost and Accessibility
Around the world, firefighting forces have deployed advanced technology to support forest fire suppression: telecommunication and aircraft. Over regular periods, the costs of equipment for airborne attack have been quite financially sustainable. Today, with the design of new aircraft such as gardeners, aircraft, helicopters, water scoopers, and amphibians, these costs have skyrocketed, making such a system unaffordable for many European countries. In addition, regular operational use also appears to be bound to a number of constraints. Large water-carrying aircraft have water capacities of 6,000 up to 15,000 liters. The problem is that they are difficult to operate or have access that is a legal or operational issue at the fire front very often. The costs per completed mission tell the story of the complexity of these aircraft operations. Furthermore, their actual performance, their conceptual disadvantages, and their applicability to various types of fire have yet to be determined in a more rigorous manner. It is clear that beyond such sporadic examples, large water-carrying aircraft for European forests are not a reality in an increasing number of cases, but their limits are far from having been surpassed.
One of the first downfalls of advanced technology is, thus, cost. With such unaffordability, the military UAV solution has been cancelled because of its lack of financial sustainability. Even without imagining any costs associated with the operation of those big and complex machinery or items move or put back into mission, the acquisition cost for such items is extremely high compared to those respective of more conventional piston types of single engine (cost four times higher in the case of scooping aircraft, with an acquisition price of 20M$/pce). Furthermore, the training of a dedicated team including overhead costs (such as management, operatives, and account ecc.) should still be added, as well as that for specialized tools, equipment, and installations, instead of not accounting several additional costs such as type conversion of pilots, the depreciation of a narrow utilisable life leading aircraft to be add-at or fully destroyed by capable of aviation authority that should be undertaken, the insurance, the damage that can occur of an accident or unexpected event (cost to intervene the material), and further costs have not been collected. Finally, as reiterated by some key international experiences, the use of big aircraft can face several limitations from an operational point of view. Even when technically feasible to hit a purpose, the ability to put water out of targets in hard condition has still to be demonstrated for some tactics such as using a helicopter to dangle the aircraft between the fire front and the target to be protected (and not a helicopter behind the cone of the aircraft, for example).
9. Case Studies
The use of technology in forest firefighting incidents is making an impact both at the tactical and strategic levels. This section reports a few case studies collected from the wildfires that mostly spread in the California region, United States.
In 2007, during the Los Gatos Fire (Santa Clara Unit, California), the managers of the Command Post were trained from the Geospatial Intelligence world on how to use, interpret, and analyze the information coming from the IR sensors of a UAV. The fire started 7 days after a big event in Los Angeles fire department. The data from the UAV helped the incident managers in developing some fire containment strategy. In 2009, the IR technology PadTac system developed by Airborne Innovations at the General Electric (GE) ISR Systems lab was employed to help the field managers of the Station Fire (Los Angeles National Forest) fight the fire. Data acquired by the Payload Operator on-site helped in accurately plotting the fire perimeters to guide tactical aircraft in their suppression of the wildfires.
Some of the technology prevented the entry of tanks and helicopters during the night. Balloon technologies and sensors have been tested, providing more than visible pictures of burning trees and objects. From spring 2021, SuperTanker has ten Leica Geosystems (HEX) SPL100 3D single-photon LiDAR sensors embedded on its Boeing 747, using the technology to optimize slurry drops during firefighting operations. Furthermore, the ability of satellites to track the wildfire incidents is saving a lot of lives. Have fire-watching satellites like those launched by the University of Toronto taken off? When did the commercial space companies enter the fray, providing up to the half-hour update of the wildfire incidents each day?
9.1. California Wildfires
The annual California wildfires are some of the most devastating fires in the United States. They tend to involve rugged and inaccessible terrain and are not limited in the amount of time for firefighting efforts but are costly. Thus, they can provide significant insight into the applications of advanced technology that can reduce containment costs and minimize the potential for larger fires. This ‘winner-take-all’ incentive has driven the lead U.S. wildland firefighting agency to continually integrate new technology and to spend resources searching and evaluating other promising tools. The most advanced area of ex-ante fire risk reduction technology, in terms of effectiveness, is the operational applications of remote sensing assets. These assets provide large spatial and spectral coverage that can be used to model and map the continuous change in fuel moisture and other elements of the wildland urban interface. Additionally, they can provide prompt three-dimensional measurement of the wildfire boundary, with smoke plume, allowing for increased fireline safety and effectiveness over the current use of manned aircraft. Aerial firefighters continue to acquire new weights when increasing size, range and equipped capabilities that exceed aircraft potential dangers; however, their brush-fueling dependency can seriously compromise safety during protracted contests.
As for remote sensing technology whether space-based or high altitude platform-based, these assets have shortcomings such as: interoperability, frequency of coverage, push-down of technology, validity of relevant data, point of impact solutions, societal expectations and civil liberties, justifying the continued study and application. Finally, regular testing and the designations of military surplus equipment as Non-ADPEL (Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988), 21 U.S. Code 873, continue to be avenues for acquiring additional technology. Advanced technologies should therefore be evaluated using economic methods based on observable costs like firefighting decision costs, but also include cross-division costs that are harder to estimate like the untraceable costs to health, habitat, economies, structure, law, and other programs entailed by smoke and fire escapes. Advanced remote sensing technologies are deservedly examined because of their economic and life-saving potential as well as the development of users, industries, and geospatial infrastructures mitigating wildfire impacts.
10. Future Trends and Opportunities
With increasingly large and devastating California fires occurring annually, land managers are actively “thinning” forests, using controlled burns, and implementing conservation strategies in the hopes of reducing the amount of underbrush that’s available for wildfires to burn in the years leading up to the 2020 fire season. In theory, reduced stress on this natural resource will also “alleviate the state’s water shortages,” since “the forest’s sponge won’t be bursting and trashing local water systems” as much post-fire, according to Zeke Lunder, who is currently pursuing a Water Management degree at Humboldt State University. Further, in the Pacific Northwest, millions of dead trees attributed to the western pine beetle infestation have left forests in need of treatment to reduce fuel loads for potential large fires. Without treatment, the likelihood of a high-severity fire becomes much higher. They report, “There are huge opportunities in not suppressing every fire, but letting beneficial fires burn to reach a natural fire perimeter”. As a result, “We may be able to explore long-term solutions like conserving more water in critical areas by changing what species are growing on the ground. However, fire and weather are increasingly unpredictable with climate change,” the report concluded.
The above section did not specifically accompany an essay but describes the development of a report from 2019 exploring climate change and the new wildfire reality confronted today. The third section in that report takes an in-depth look at how U.S. cities and communities at the wildland-urban interface are learning from 70 years of experience through research at the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab and the Austrian Federal Research and Training Centre for Forests, Natural Hazards and Landscape, and Europe in general. However, future opportunities for utilizing web mapping technology and technology in general for forest fire management are discussed in this next section.
10.1. Integration of Multiple Technologies
Advanced technologies in the early intervention of forest fires have been on the frontlines of many recent research areas. In these studies, critical times are not lost by intervening forces against forest fires, and they are aimed to be terminated at a minimum level. In some of these researches, it has been stated that single data cannot provide perfect decision-making, and some of them include the development of models equipped to make decisions in a short time. In this context, while the development of models for human fire management is focused in some of these studies, at the beginning of others, the infrastructure of traditional communication and exploration equipment is being improved. In addition, among these advanced technologies, the integration of multiple technologies into different systems or directly to each other has once again moved to the center.
It is known that there are many technologies in the literature that are widely used today for the first intervention against forest fires, have data not shared with other technological solutions, and can be designed in an integrated way. In the literature study, forest information systems equipped with remote sensing, robotic systems equipped for forest fires, mobility and coordination studies in wildland-urban areas, soft computing methods, etc. There was detailed information about many systems. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no study on technologies developed for the first intervention against forest fires in an integrated manner or the results are compared to each other. Therefore, a literature study was carried out in Chapter 2, where studies on advanced systems focused on the first intervention against forest fires only and in a wide range of systems prepared in advance for forest fires were briefly mentioned.
11. Conclusion
This report has strived to present a comprehensive analysis of the impact that advanced technologies are making with relation to fire management and firefighting. The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that these technologies have great potential to reduce stress and anxiety levels amongst frontline crews, and thereby make forest firefighting more efficient. It has also clearly demonstrated that it is not just policy makers and scientists who are seeking to utilize these technologies, but also the new generation of firefighters who, unlike their predecessors, have grown up alongside the rise of the “digital age”. As such, we can expect to see a growing impetus to embrace these technologies over the coming years, as it becomes possible to digitally monitor the forest fire situation from a distance and send in drones armed with flame retardant to suppress fire before it spreads beyond control.
However, as the interviews and other research clearly illustrate, the technology will not only streamline the job of the firefighter, it will change the role altogether. It is imperative that, alongside the integration of these new technologies, there are efforts made to ensure that the traditions and culture of firefighting remain alive. The data and insights presented here represent merely a small cross section of the implications emerging from the wider research. Consequently, this report should be seen merely as a starting point, from which further, more detailed studies can be carried out. One of the next steps in this nearly uncharted area of research could be to establish an agreed set of parameters for the growth of particular technologies, which could extend to embracing UAVs for forest firefighting.
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