“This big vision we have is uncrewed suppression activities in a wildland fire fighting setting in allowing those suppression activities to continue in like a tricky visibility condition,” a NASA researcher said, it’s all hands on deck to save lives and protect property, but coordinating all the crews, gear and equipment during an emergency is no easy task. Now some NASA researchers are taking a look at what could be improved.
Vincent is part of the team bringing more recognition to the second “A” in NASA, which stands for aeronautics. This past week, he was sharing NASA's research that could assist during wildland fires at the“Assisting emergency responders in wildfires, hurricanes and then eventually urban disasters. We’ve been helping them more effectively fight fires or create those safety services that mitigate the risk to people on the ground and people on the air,” Vincent said.
”Having the ability for that type of capability to continue regardless of the visibility conditions we think will bring an impact to the wildland fire fighting activities or just the response itself, and ultimately we’re trying to enable that,” Mercer said. “You would be listening for different radio clearances,” Mercer said. “You would have like a two-way radio you could imagine for example. And that’s how they coordinate the airspace when they’re sharing the airspace between various crewed assets and uncrewed assets.”