Introduction
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) has
been proven to have tremendous potential for many real world applications
today. They can be used to perform missions such as search and rescue, facility
inspection, border patrol, surveillance and reconnaissance, military strikes,
etc. Depending on mission type, various platforms with different payload
capabilities are widely available in the market.
UAS Technology for Firefighting
Wildfires, especially those in
densely populated forest, are very deadly and can have devastating consequences
if they rapidly spread and destroy everything in their path. According to
Burgess (2014), there are average occurrences of 100,000 forest fires in the US
that devastated more than 4 to 5 million acres of land annually. Fighting
forest fires require tremendous amount of resources such as deploying manned
aircraft to overfly the fires carrying water-filled tanks to try and put out or
dampen the forest. At the same time, there will also be firefighters on the
ground that support the firefighting operation. These operations are
increasingly getting riskier and difficult as forest fires are getting bigger
on average, possibly due to climate change (Werner, 2015).
UAS Platforms
Various
platforms of UASs can be deployed for firefighting purposes. The aircraft first
have to be able to detect hotspots and problematic areas, putting out the fires
and also monitor and perform any necessary search and rescue under thick smoke
and heat that can make it difficult for human firefighters and other manned
aircraft to safely tackle the problem.
KMAX helicopter. One of the platforms
that is well suited to aid firefighting is the KMAX helicopter. It is a
remotely piloted helicopter, which has the option to also carry a human pilot,
that has demonstrated good potential to drop about 6,000 lbs of water or fire
retardant (Vertical Mag, 2015). Being a helicopter with capabilities of
vertical take-offs and landing as well as hovering in space, it is ideal for
monitoring and concentrating efforts on a particular spot on ground.
Boeing Insitu ScanEagle. Another
platform can be the Boeing Insitu ScanEagle. Conveniently launched from a
catapult and retrieved via a skyhook, this UAS has been used to monitor forest
fire in Olympic National Park (Gates, 2015). It is a fixed wing long endurance UAS that is
capable of flying non-stop for 15 hours (Boeing, 2016). Therefore, it is
suitable to quickly scan the area for hotspots with suitable onboard sensors to
allow the hotspots to be targeted before the fire spreads bigger and become unmanageable.
MQ-9 Predator. The Predator UAS,
commonly known to be used for military strikes, can also be configured with
appropriate infra-red sensors to aid firefighting efforts. According to Pocock
(2013), the Predator had been deployed to support firefighters in controlling
the huge California Rim fire. The longer endurance of the platform is superior
over helicopters and like the rest of the platforms, it can be used to identify
hotspots, direction of fire, and other important real-time information to be
shared with ground commanders. This will help better manage firefighting
efforts, as well as aiding the uncovering of safe routes for retreating in case
the fire becomes uncontrollable (Pocock, 2013).
Challenges
There
are legal challenges associated with using UAS for firefighting efforts. There
have been issues of UASs getting into the way of air-tankers and other manned
aircraft, especially if the firefighting involves joint efforts from multiple
agencies (Zorthian, 2016). FAA has been very concerned about the integration of
UAS in the national airspace system (NAS). Without a robust and standardized
set of rules and procedures, commercial activities using UASs have been very
much limited to those who have successfully gotten approval from FAA with a
certificate of authorization. However, while UAS has been largely proven to
benefit firefighting and rescue, there is an ethical dilemma as to which is
more important, saving lives without approval from FAA or getting approval
first but risk being too late to appropriately handle any firefighting or
rescue efforts in time. According to Werner (2015), firefighting agencies are
in the midst of working out a set of established procedures to have UAS flights
a regular part of firefighting activities, and this will enable the firefighting
agency to dispense away with the cumbersome procedure of getting FAA approval
for every unmanned flight. Another challenge would be the issue of privacy.
Flying a UAS over areas to monitor and detect hotspots may not be popular with
everyone resident in the vicinity. People may find their privacy intruded,
especially with current state of the art image sensors.
Conclusion
While
UASs have time and time again been proven as valuable assets for aiding
firefighting efforts in wildfires, legal and ethical issues will exist until
such time when FAA and law enforcement agencies sort out the finer details of
how to safely integrate UAS into the airspace.
References
Burgees, M. (2014, November 20). Fighting the spread:
Drones touted as safer way to stop forest fires. Factor. Retrieved from http://factor-tech.com/drones/9707-fighting-the-spread-drones-touted-as-safer-way-to-stop-forest-fires/
Boeing (2016). ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle.
Retrieved from http://www.boeing.com/history/products/scaneagle-unmanned-aerial-vehicle.page
Gates, D. (2015, August 21). Drones tracks fire hot
spots in successful Olympic forest test. Seattle
Times. Retrieved from http://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/drone-tracks-fire-hotspots-in-successful-national-park-test/
Pocock, C. (2013, October 4). Predator UAV helps fight
fire in California. AIN Online.
Retrieved from http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/defense/2013-10-04/predator-uav-helps-fight-fires-california
Vertical Mag (2015, October 20). Unmanned KMAX
completes firefighting demo. Retrieved from http://www.verticalmag.com/news/unmannedkmaxcompletesfirefightingdemo/
Werner (2015, June). Fire drones. Aerospace America. Retrieved from http://www.aerospaceamerica.org/Documents/Aerospace%20America%20PDFs%202015/June2015/Feature_FireDrones_AA_June2015-3.pdf
Zorthian, J. (2016, June 27). Drones are a big problem
for firefighters battling massive blazes. Time.
Retrieved from http://time.com/4383769/drones-firefighters-wildfires/
No comments:
Post a Comment