Researchers Seek to Use Drones For Brushfire Forecasting

schliz writes "Australian researchers expect to use unmanned aircraft in bushfire surveillance and search and rescue scenarios within two years. The news comes as New South Wales faces 'catastrophic' fire danger ratings and what firefighters say could be the worst conditions in the state's history."

Comments

Headline will read:

[toygeek]

Unmanned Aircraft crash causes Catastrophic brushfire

Re:Headline will read:

[donaldm]

Back-burning is a fairly common way of reducing the bush-fire threat and is actually carried out in most Australian cities especially in the cooler months. The problem you have is that Australia is huge (a little smaller then the continental USA) with a population of approximately 22 million compared to the USA's 312 million. Normally when a bush fire starts and is in a remote place it can be very difficult get enough firefighters into the area. It is not feasible to back-burn bush-land unless you have a considerable amount of man-power and resources especially water which may be in short supply.

Having drone aircraft for bush-file spotting is actually a very good cost effective idea especially if you can fly a fire-fighting team into the area before the fire gets out of control. Unfortunately even as I write we have record temperatures (approx 40 to 44 degrees C) and strong winds and many bush fires that have started today are in difficult to get to areas and almost impossible to put out.

Re:Headline will read:

[niftydude]

Also it's fucking hot out here. As in - my tyres got sticky in the car park hot out here.

In fact - it is so hot that the Bureau of Meteorology has just added new colours to its weather forecasting chart - because the previous chart colour range capped at 50C and in the coming weeks we are going to need more.

I kid you not.

Re:Headline will read:

[jamesh]

Back-burning is a fairly common way of reducing the bush-fire threat and is actually carried out in most Australian cities especially in the cooler months. The problem you have is that Australia is huge (a little smaller then the continental USA) with a population of approximately 22 million compared to the USA's 312 million. Normally when a bush fire starts and is in a remote place it can be very difficult get enough firefighters into the area. It is not feasible to back-burn bush-land unless you have a considerable amount of man-power and resources especially water which may be in short supply.

That, and "backburning fire out of control" is not an uncommon headline.

Real-time Australian Bushfire Map

[Jeremy Lee]

This map combines near real-time information (hourly to daily updates) from multiple public agencies to give a composite view of fire incidents affecting Australia.
http://www.unorthodox.com.au/fire/

Re:I hope the drones use Google Maps

[donaldm]

BTW, title mentions Brushfires, summary says Bushfires; which is correct?

Actually both are correct, however in Austrlia we normally refer to areas that are not cultivated or in a city or town as The Bush hence the term "Bushfire" is used to refer to fires in those area. We also have the term Grass-fire which is rather obvious however this can be quite dangerous as well,