Portable Traffic Management Tool for Wildfire Operations

An underlying difference between wildfire management operations versus other segments of non-traditional traffic management is the critical need for coordination between manned and unmanned vehicles in an area with limited availability of datalink communications. To successfully integrate UAS for wildfire operations, traffic management limitations among not only manned and unmanned vehicles, but also air and ground actors, need to be overcome. During today’s operations, emergency responders are overwhelmed with data from different sources and platforms. UAS operations need to be integrated without increasing the workload of emergency responders or sacrificing the safety of operations. Effectively communicating and providing a common situational awareness on a single platform is key for the successful integration of new technologies in the firefighting field. Improving Aviation is proposing to develop a portable wildfire management tool that combines two critical aspects of wildfire suppression efforts: a common situational awareness map for multi-modal vehicle operations (including crewed and uncrewed aerial vehicles, ground vehicles, and pedestrians) and a real-time weather transmission standard to exchange atmospheric information required for real-time models of wildfire spread. The proposed platform is based on Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) open-source software, MoVE, a publicly available multi-vehicle testing framework that incorporates multi-modal vehicle motion and provides a common situational awareness picture where connected vehicles share telemetry data, including position and atmospheric information. The MoVE platform will be enhanced to serve as a wildfire management operations platform providing a self-powered, self-contained portable station with telemetry information exchanges from multiple ground and air vehicles equipped with varying data links.

The proposed solution aims to advance the development of the Traffic Management-eXploration (XTM) project and System Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations (STEReO) system by providing a tool and framework to enable the integration of UAS in emergency management operations, leveraging principles from the UAS Traffic Management (UTM) system. The research performed in this effort will enable effective, low-latency communications and a common situational awareness picture.

The target commercial market is the wildfire suppression industry as well as public and agencies responsible for emergency response. These agencies can use the proposed tool to obtain a common operational picture, ensuring the safety and efficiency of wildfire management operations and achieving an interoperable real-time communication system that can share data across multiple involved actors.

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