How to help first-responders keep a smooth communication with during a wildfires?

Content

• Background

• Challenges

• Solution-IFLY Portable Emergency Command System

• Benefit

  
  

Background

April 2019, Gangwon Province wildfire.The wildfire lasted three days. This massive conflagration burned 1,307 acres of land and destroyed over 2,000 buildings. Around thirty people were injured and the fire resulted in two deaths.

On March 30, 2019, a forest fire broke out in Sichuan Province, China. After more than 1,300 people struggled for nearly 20 hours, the fire was finally extinguished. 31 people were killed in the fire.

Wildfires are particularly common during hot and dry periods. They can occur in forests, grasslands, brush and deserts. With sufficient wind they can rapidly spread in only a matter of hours and pose a threat to public safety, civilizations and wildlife alike. So once the fire occurs, the fire department must immediately act to arrive in scene to prevent, control and suppress the fire.

Challenges

However one of the biggest challenges the firefighters face during a wildfire is communication. In a fire emergency, responders on the scene must deploy in minutes. So the communication network also need to be deployed minutes and work stable during complex environment. In reality, deploying an disaster relief communication network in wild always meet the following challenges:

1. Long distance, wide coverage and no public network

As we all know, 31% of the earth is covered by forests. These areas are usually remote, inaccessible, sparsely populated, and have no communication signal coverage. Firefighters will face enormous challenges once a fire breaks out. How to quickly mobilize departments at all levels to rush to the scene? How to quickly set up an emergency communication network to achieve 100% coverage signal?

2. A large number of rescue workers will make the commanding and dispatching work difficult to conduct.

In a forest fire rescue operation, due to the large disaster area and complex environment, a large amount of human resources will usually participate in the rescue work. However, cross-departmental staff scheduling is often very difficult. How does the command center scientifically unify and dispatch resources reasonably? How to get real-time dynamic information of on-site force deployment?

3. Fires are unpredictable

At the disaster relief site, the disaster situation is affected by wind, water, fire and other factors at any time and is unpredictable. What’s worse, the scene is full of smog and the visibility is extremely poor. This requires the communication terminals to be waterproof, explosion-proof, anti-drop, etc., to adapt to various application environments. At the same time, it must ensure that the communication is not interfered and interrupted, and work stable.

Solution

• IFLY Emergency Response Communications provide a Instant broadband & stable wireless network for real time voice & video communication between first-responders & decision-makers.

  
  

• Fire fighters can upload on-site real time HD video to communication vehicle and stream to large screens by their handheld trunking handset or the helmet camera connected with a body-worn CPE. Meanwhile the command vehicle could sends the videos to headquarter command center via satellite for implementing visual command and cross-department collaboration.

• IFLY Instant disaster relief communication solution includes interoperability among the existed narrowband system, VSAT communication and public network to achieve the cross-dept and seamless communication. So that once the disaster attacks, the department can connects with all the human resources that are involved or will be involved immediately.

  
  

• IFLY have varieties of terminals to adopt to different application. The manpack type is for individuals, the trunking handset is for easy portable, and vehicle-mounted is for very long range nlos transmission by installed in car. Different terminals make the system have good flexibility.

Benefits

IFLY believes that the broadband trunking and visual command portable emergency system will play an crucial role in protecting lives and property during an emergency rescue.