Accessing the Progress of the Association of Unmanned Systems International Firefighting Table Top Exercises

摘要

Federal and State fire fighting agencies are in need of new technology to aid in wildland fire fighting efforts. As agency budgets decline implementation of new technology will only be realized if the new technology is able to benefit the firefighter in a way that will result in cost saving in the overall budget. Unmanned Aerial Systems and Unmanned Ground Vehicles have that potential. Unmanned systems have proven themselves in military applications there have been only limited deployments of unmanned system in wildland fire fighting. While most of these deployments have successfully shown that unmanned systems can aid firefighting efforts they have also exposed the need for metrics for evaluating their benefits to the firefighter. These metrics will allow for the business case to be made for fire fighting agencies to make room in their budgets for unmanned systems. In addition, unmanned system manufactures and providers need to have confidence that there is a market for cost-effective, innovative unmanned systems tailored to wildland fire fighting. The Association of Unmanned Systems International had hosted two Firefighting Table Top Exercises FF-TTX, Monetery CA, 2009 and Dugway UT, 2010 in partnership with the US Forest Service and the Naval Postgraduate School to provide a platform for unmanned system community to interact with wildland firefighters. The lessons learned from these two exercises should pave the way for unmanned systems to improve the speed, focus, and agility of the wildland fire fighters worldwide.