Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) System for Wildfire Response

Aeris proposes to develop an Unmanned aircraft systems Traffic Management (UTM) airspace operations capability specifically designed to support Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) wildfire response operations. This wildfire UTM system will ingest continually updating information on environmental/fire conditions, dynamically evolving air traffic demands comprised of both UAS and traditional firefighting aircraft, microscale weather information and then leverage graph analytics machine learning methods to provide tactical UAM/AAM UTM capability that can provide dynamic and real-time aircraft route planning and scheduling recommendations for wildfire response stakeholders. The innovation proposed here will enable combined situational awareness between operations centers and in-theater assets during an active fire response by dynamically aggregating data pertaining to fire location, ground-based personnel, asset locations, staging sites, vertiports, and aerial traffic of traditional manned and unmanned systems. This capability will allow for the dynamic scheduling of aircraft and the deconfliction of the airspace as users enter sortie requests in real time, it will accommodate on-demand coordination of aircraft regardless of their performance capabilities (ie, everything from a small camera drone up to a manned heavy airtanker). The focus of the Phase I effort proposed here will be to provide the user of this wildland fire UTM system with a detailed and deconflicted route selection and flight schedule that optimizes efficiency of flight operations and ensures safety.

A core mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is to support the development of technologies that enhance the safety and efficiency of aviation operations in the United States National Airspace System. The technologies proposed in this Phase I SBIR will demonstrate a core capability and provide a novel solution for scheduling unmanned aircraft responding to an active wildfire to ensure safe an efficient Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) operation.

The notional wildfire UTM architecture concept currently envisioned by NASA will provide a key piece of operational software that can be implemented by state and local agencies responding to an active wildfire. The system will provide a common operating picture fort UTM operations for use by local fire departments requiring a wildfire response capability.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 4) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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