Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wireless network provides critical link in battle to control California's Coyote Wildfire

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 23:03:59 -0400

Wireless network provides critical link in battle to control California's Coyote
Wildfire

After lightning touched off the Coyote Fire July 16, the California
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) deployed more than 1,700
firefighters, 10 helicopters and several bulldozers to battle the blaze. To
provide Internet communications for the CDF operations camp, researchers
from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and San Diego State
University deployed a high-speed wireless link to the remote site in
northeastern San Diego County within hours of a request for help.

"The dissemination of information and incident intelligence up and down the
command-and-control chain of command is more important than ever," said Jim
Garrett, CDF Emergency Command Center chief. "The connectivity provided to
CDF for the Coyote Fire was a real-life exercise that clearly demonstrated
how valuable and useful the technology provided by HPWREN is to our agency.
HPWREN provided us an invaluable service that cannot be overestimated." The
19,000-acre Coyote Fire was contained by July 24 and controlled by July 27.

The High-Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN
http://hpwren.ucsd.edu/) connection allowed the firefighters to receive
weather and other data in real time and submit incident summaries to the
state's emergency response agencies. HPWREN is funded by the National
Science Foundation, the independent federal agency that supports fundamental
research and education across all fields of science and engineering.

"All in all, the initial antenna and data connectivity setup probably did
not take much more than eight hours after the request was made," said UCSD's
Hans-Werner Braun, an HPWREN principal investigator. "Then, the next day we
added a real-time high-resolution network camera at the operations site to
allow for remote image access to the local situation."

The data connectivity team included Braun, Bud Hale, Jim Hale and Todd
Hansen of the UCSD San Diego Supercomputer Center, as well as Pablo Bryant
of the San Diego State University Field Station Programs.

HPWREN reached the Coyote Fire camp via line-of-sight wireless links between
the supercomputer center and the Cuyamaca Mountains, then to Palomar
Mountain and finally to the CDF camp--a distance of more than 70 miles.

The fire destroyed several buildings at the Sky Oaks ecological field
station operated by San Diego State. Vegetation and instrumentation related
to several ongoing experiments also burned. Plans are underway to link the
Sky Oaks station to HPWREN, which already provides Internet connectivity to
San Diego State's Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve.

Earlier in July, the HPWREN team connected the CDF's Ramona Air Attack Base
in San Diego County to its high-speed network. This connectivity allows
firefighters to remotely access high-resolution still and video cameras, as
well as other sensors located throughout the county. The link also provides
access to Internet data such as satellite maps, infrared imagery, forest
fuel conditions and weather at remote sensors in support of emergency
situations. The CDF's Red Mountain fire station is also connected to HPWREN.

The goal of the HPWREN project is to demonstrate and evaluate a
non-commercial, prototype, high-performance, wide-area wireless network in
San Diego and Riverside counties. The network includes backbone nodes on the
UCSD and San Diego State campuses and a number of hard-to-reach areas in
remote environments.

HPWREN is used for network analysis research and provides high-speed
Internet access to field researchers in geophysics, astronomy and ecology as
well as educational opportunities for rural Native American learning centers
and schools. The HPWREN team also works with various state, regional and
local agencies to demonstrate wireless networking in emergency response
exercises.

Contact: David Hart
[email-masked]
703-292-7737

The High-Performance Wireless
Research and Education Network (HPWREN
http://hpwren.ucsd.edu/

National Science Foundation: http://www.nsf.gov/

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-07/nsf-wnp072803.php

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Toner for Your Printer or Fax at LaserTonerSuperstore.com-Save 55%!
We have your brand: HP, IBM, Canon, Xerox, Apple and many more for less!
http://www.LaserTonerSuperstore.com
http://us.click.yahoo.com/YmQqWC/qicGAA/ySSFAA/61FxlB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/