Summary & Reader Response Final Draft

 The article “Drones Take Their Place on the Cutting Edge of Wildfire Fighting” (Patterson, 2021) states that “Lifesaving backpack technology as sophisticated as this isn’t available to firefighters. But it could be soon, as engineers work to take firefighting drones to new heights”. He mentions that drones have been developed to locate a fire's hot spots and set controlled flames to minimise possible wildfire fuel. He also explains that the KHawk drone is designed to fly autonomously with ground control while transmitting weather and fire data, including forecasts of where the flames will spread next. Ideally, firemen would receive an early alert if they were in danger. He states that Firefighters are using drones to employ an intentional ignition approach to burn vegetation that might generate fuel for wildfires. Commercial drone platforms outfitted with payload system IGNIS carries a basket filled with ignition spheres. These spheres are used to set up controlled burns. Drones are also being used for reforestation. They spread new seeds in predetermined locations. Patterson finished the article with a sentence that as land managers examine new techniques for battling wildfires in the future decades, remotely piloted aircraft will play an increasingly essential role. 

 

Ideally, firefighters should be able to fully manage and control wildfires. However, Patterson stated that “summer wildfire seasons are getting longer and more devastating”, and it increases severity wildfires. Drones should be efficiently used in controlling wildfire as they will monitor the fire, do intentional ignition instead of firefighter and save a lot of resources. 

  

Firstly, drones can monitor the fire and evaluate the fire front line (Viseras et al., 2019). Multiple drones are usually used with a thermal infrared and a visual camera and GPS, and they collect geo-referenced data from wildfire areas. Around 3 drones can fly to different locations to measure the temperature of the fire by “using three temperature range configurations:” (Viseras et al., 2019, p. 102-103). The data will be transmitted to on-board Intel NUC computer. Moreover, since the drone can fly at a lower height compared to a helicopter, the pictures taken by the drone can spot even very small hotspots. Hence, the drone will help in evaluating the fire location. 

  

Secondly, drones are using IGNIS system to employ an intentional ignition approach to burn vegetation that might generate fuel for wildfires (Lakshmisri, 2020). Commercial drone platforms outfitted with payload system IGNIS carry a basket filled with ignition spheres. These spheres are used to set up controlled burns. Once the drone drops the ignition spheres, the spheres will react with chemicals and start a tiny fire on a specific area. It will make the fuel burn so that it won’t burn again by big fire spread by wildfire. Therefore, using drones for intentional ignition will be easier and safer to control the wildfire. 

  

Lastly, a drone is cost-efficient and offers a more close-up point of view compared to a helicopter (DJI Enterprise, 2021). Aircraft and helicopters can’t fly lower in the wildfire area due to a lot of disturbances such as big trees. However, due to the small design of the drone, the drone can collect data from closer view at a lower height compared to a manned aircraft. Moreover, DJI Enterprise states that according to the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), they used drone to spot the smaller fires that can’t be spotted by a helicopter, and it results in saving of $50 million. Hence, the helicopter can be used for other purposes like transporting people, water drops and other tasks.

 

Although drone can play key role in wildfire with various features, the drone has a limited battery to perform continuously (Khonji et al., 2017).  Drones have various features to fight wildfires such as GPS, autopilot, thermal camera and autopilot system. Also, most commercial drones have a multi-rotor design. These allow the drone to have from 15 minutes to 40 minutes only. Even if no human intervention drone charging system has been developed, commercial GPS and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) won’t be able to work properly as it can lead to inaccurate landing. Therefore, the drone's battery should be last longer to perform continuously. 

  

In conclusion, drones can control wildfire as they can transmit data and operate intentional ignition. Also, it can replace a helicopter for certain situations where the helicopter is not capable. However, the short battery life of drones might cause a slight delay in wildfire operations. I think that using drones to fight a wildfire is very efficient and firefighters should use them frequently as the drone industry is growing drastically. 

  

  

References

 

DJI Enterprise. (2021, May 11). 4 Ways Drones Fight Forest Fires. https://enterprise-insights.dji.com/blog/drones-in-forest-fire-response

 

Khonji, M., Alshehhi, M., Tseng, C. M., & Chau, C. K. (2017, May). Autonomous inductive charging system for battery-operated electric drones. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Future Energy Systems (pp. 322 327). https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3077839.3078462

 

Patterson, T. (2021, October 7). Drones Take Their Place on the Cutting Edge of Wildfire Fighting: Modern Flying. Flying Mag. https://www.flyingmag.com/drones-wildfire-fighting/

 

 Surya, L. (2020). Fighting fire with AI: Using deep learning to help predict wildfires in the US. International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts (IJCRT), ISSN, 2320 2882. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3786539

 

Viseras, A., Marchal, J., Schaab, M., Pages, J., & Estivill, L. (2019, September). Wildfire Monitoring and Hotspots Detection with Aerial Robots: Measurement Campaign and First Results. In 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR) (pp. 102-103). IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8848961

 

 

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