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While a satellite would provide continuous coverage over the area of interest, I'm curious to know if it's upfront cost of "several hundred million dollars" cou

While a satellite would provide continuous coverage over the area of interest, I'm curious to know if it's upfront cost of "several hundred million dollars" couldn't be better spent on continual coverage with UAVs during the summer months and daylight hours. Just a thought, I could be totally off base here. I'm just not seeing the inherent advantage of a satellite, especially given the cost.

privong 13y ago
> during the summer months and daylight hours. That's one advantage of a statellite: it's always looking. Also, I suspect the UAVs would be more expensive than one might expect, once you factor in the manpower necessary to operate them (pilots and maintainence).
- HorizonXP 13y ago
  I would imagine that forest fires are less likely to be started in the winters and at night, unless they're caused by humans i.e. campfires.
  - privong 13y ago
    I agree re:winters, but am not sure about nights. I imagine nighttime storms are not infrequent and so you could get a reasonable number of lightning strikes at night, causing fires. Though, the UVA—satellite tradeoff also requires thinking about how soon you want to see a fire after it's been started. E.g., is 12 hours acceptable?
wcameron 13y ago
If you check out the abstract at: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/5/10/5173 http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/5/10/5173 you'll see that it mentions a temporal resolution of a few minutes or so, for the entire west coast. A fleet of drones might be cheaper, but they wouldn't be able to cover that kind of area that often. I worked doing something similar with using weather satellites to detect volcanic eruptions in the north pacific. This is totally feasible in the here and now, whereas I imagine public acceptance of massive surveillance drone use is a bit far off.
malandrew 13y ago
Agree. At least with UAVs you can constantly upgrade the equipment to keep reducing costs further. You'd just need one solid fuselage and then you can keep improving the imaging sensors, engine and energy source. Maybe if we declared a War Against Forest Fires, we can de-weaponize military UAVs and re-appropriate them for fire detection.
HarryHirsch 13y ago
I heard Kerry Emanuel (the climatologist) talk a few years back. He explained it like this: one can gather weather data with balloons and dropsondes, or with satellites. The first method is cheap and yields fine-grained data, the second one is sexy.
anigbrowl 13y ago
You'd need a lot of UAVs to cover the whole west coast. I'm not sure why you'd want to restrict coverage to daylight hours; camping fires are more likely to be lit at night so early spotting makes sense. Likewise I'm not sure you'd want to restrict observation to the summer months, since dry winters are common here and winter wildires are not unknown (eg there was a large one in CO in March of 2011). I don't know whether climate change is a major factor in wildfire incidence year over year, but drier conditions are the sort of effect predicted by theory. But my main objection is about the size of the observation area. When you take in the # of UAVs, the launch/landing facilities, the fuel costs, the air traffic control overhead, and the data correlation requirements, the satellite doesn't sound so expensive after all.
ceejayoz 13y ago
UAVs are probably more likely to crash and cause a forest fire than a satellite.
001sky 13y ago
The other issue is repsonse times. Many of the responders are volunteers and the areas are inaccessible. The notion that there will be a 15 minute response time to something like the rim-fire is quite naive. Second, the experience of the SD (Cedar) fires which I believe are still the worst in the state of CA [1] this system would likewise be irrelevant. That fire was well known for some time, but other decisions and resource constraints (including legal/policy directives) forced the fire to be triaged in a secondary rank. I hate to be cynical, but this project really seems like a solution and a grant-money funnel looking for a problem and a pile of cash. The "several hundred millon dollar" pricetag would be better spend on prevention, education, and support of additiona fire-fighting infrastructure. Including preventive maintenace for things like controlled burns, etc. The notion that we need 200-400 million dollars flying overhead to fight fires caused by trivial mis-behaviour is also astonishing. These fires are often set by people doing things like spilling over an alcohol stove, setting an emergency signal, or doing some other trivial but mis-guided task. That all being said, the amount of CA forest land that has burned throughout the state in the past 10 years is absolutely insane. I'd encourage people to actively work towards solutions to the general problem. [1] http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/20LACRES.pdf http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/...
- bjterry 13y ago
  We are probably close to the point of diminishing returns on education and prevention, given people's limited attention spans, the time dedicated to reading warning messages, already prominent notices when you go to campsites, and limitations on human intellect/awareness/abilities. "According to the Ad Council, Smokey Bear and his message are recognized by 95% of adults and 77% of children."[1] The cost of fighting the Rim Fire was $127 million dollars[2], and that doesn't include some much smaller cost to repair the damages it caused (cited to be in the tens of millions by "experts"). The Cedar Fire cost $32 million in firefighting plus 15 lives and 2800 structures. The Zaca Fire cost $117 million to fight. From my perspective it's just a mathematical question whether it would be cheaper to put a satellite in the air vs. other mitigation strategies, and what the cost would be over the lifespan of the satellite for accelerated response vs. typical response. If we plug in the expected value of $200 million in additional funding to awareness I think we will be dissatisfied with the results. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Bear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Bear 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rim_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rim_Fire 3: http://interwork.sdsu.edu/fire/resources/fire_facts.htm http://interwork.sdsu.edu/fire/resources/fire_facts.htm 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaca_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaca_Fire
schainks 13y ago
This. Cheap, solar powered, slow moving UAVs or something like that would be ideal for this. Also, for those HNers that haven't learned about California forests: Part of reason we have massive fires today is because in the early 1900s we didn't understand that forests in California depended on fire for regrowth. Loggers didn't like big fires burning down their precious trees, so we suppressed fire with great prejudice[1] - even though the Native Americans used low-intensity fire frequently to manage the forest and we knew that! [2] So, today, we're still dealing with "insane fires" that we basically set up a century ago when we let much fuel accumulate in the forest. It's still going to take some time (see: decades) before all this excess fuel sorts itself out. [1] http://ucanr.edu/sites/forestry/files/78651.pdf http://ucanr.edu/sites/forestry/files/78651.pdf page 5 [2] ibid page 2

privong 13y ago

> during the summer months and daylight hours. That's one advantage of a statellite: it's always looking. Also, I suspect the UAVs would be more expensive than one might expect, once you factor in the manpower necessary to operate them (pilots and maintainence).

HorizonXP 13y ago
I would imagine that forest fires are less likely to be started in the winters and at night, unless they're caused by humans i.e. campfires.
- privong 13y ago
  I agree re:winters, but am not sure about nights. I imagine nighttime storms are not infrequent and so you could get a reasonable number of lightning strikes at night, causing fires. Though, the UVA—satellite tradeoff also requires thinking about how soon you want to see a fire after it's been started. E.g., is 12 hours acceptable?

wcameron 13y ago

If you check out the abstract at: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/5/10/5173 http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/5/10/5173 you'll see that it mentions a temporal resolution of a few minutes or so, for the entire west coast. A fleet of drones might be cheaper, but they wouldn't be able to cover that kind of area that often. I worked doing something similar with using weather satellites to detect volcanic eruptions in the north pacific. This is totally feasible in the here and now, whereas I imagine public acceptance of massive surveillance drone use is a bit far off.

malandrew 13y ago

Agree. At least with UAVs you can constantly upgrade the equipment to keep reducing costs further. You'd just need one solid fuselage and then you can keep improving the imaging sensors, engine and energy source. Maybe if we declared a War Against Forest Fires, we can de-weaponize military UAVs and re-appropriate them for fire detection.

HarryHirsch 13y ago

I heard Kerry Emanuel (the climatologist) talk a few years back. He explained it like this: one can gather weather data with balloons and dropsondes, or with satellites. The first method is cheap and yields fine-grained data, the second one is sexy.

anigbrowl 13y ago

You'd need a lot of UAVs to cover the whole west coast. I'm not sure why you'd want to restrict coverage to daylight hours; camping fires are more likely to be lit at night so early spotting makes sense. Likewise I'm not sure you'd want to restrict observation to the summer months, since dry winters are common here and winter wildires are not unknown (eg there was a large one in CO in March of 2011). I don't know whether climate change is a major factor in wildfire incidence year over year, but drier conditions are the sort of effect predicted by theory. But my main objection is about the size of the observation area. When you take in the # of UAVs, the launch/landing facilities, the fuel costs, the air traffic control overhead, and the data correlation requirements, the satellite doesn't sound so expensive after all.

ceejayoz 13y ago

UAVs are probably more likely to crash and cause a forest fire than a satellite.

001sky 13y ago

The other issue is repsonse times. Many of the responders are volunteers and the areas are inaccessible. The notion that there will be a 15 minute response time to something like the rim-fire is quite naive. Second, the experience of the SD (Cedar) fires which I believe are still the worst in the state of CA [1] this system would likewise be irrelevant. That fire was well known for some time, but other decisions and resource constraints (including legal/policy directives) forced the fire to be triaged in a secondary rank. I hate to be cynical, but this project really seems like a solution and a grant-money funnel looking for a problem and a pile of cash. The "several hundred millon dollar" pricetag would be better spend on prevention, education, and support of additiona fire-fighting infrastructure. Including preventive maintenace for things like controlled burns, etc. The notion that we need 200-400 million dollars flying overhead to fight fires caused by trivial mis-behaviour is also astonishing. These fires are often set by people doing things like spilling over an alcohol stove, setting an emergency signal, or doing some other trivial but mis-guided task. That all being said, the amount of CA forest land that has burned throughout the state in the past 10 years is absolutely insane. I'd encourage people to actively work towards solutions to the general problem. [1] http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/20LACRES.pdf http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/...

bjterry 13y ago
We are probably close to the point of diminishing returns on education and prevention, given people's limited attention spans, the time dedicated to reading warning messages, already prominent notices when you go to campsites, and limitations on human intellect/awareness/abilities. "According to the Ad Council, Smokey Bear and his message are recognized by 95% of adults and 77% of children."[1] The cost of fighting the Rim Fire was $127 million dollars[2], and that doesn't include some much smaller cost to repair the damages it caused (cited to be in the tens of millions by "experts"). The Cedar Fire cost $32 million in firefighting plus 15 lives and 2800 structures. The Zaca Fire cost $117 million to fight. From my perspective it's just a mathematical question whether it would be cheaper to put a satellite in the air vs. other mitigation strategies, and what the cost would be over the lifespan of the satellite for accelerated response vs. typical response. If we plug in the expected value of $200 million in additional funding to awareness I think we will be dissatisfied with the results. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Bear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Bear 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rim_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rim_Fire 3: http://interwork.sdsu.edu/fire/resources/fire_facts.htm http://interwork.sdsu.edu/fire/resources/fire_facts.htm 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaca_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaca_Fire

schainks 13y ago

This. Cheap, solar powered, slow moving UAVs or something like that would be ideal for this. Also, for those HNers that haven't learned about California forests: Part of reason we have massive fires today is because in the early 1900s we didn't understand that forests in California depended on fire for regrowth. Loggers didn't like big fires burning down their precious trees, so we suppressed fire with great prejudice[1] - even though the Native Americans used low-intensity fire frequently to manage the forest and we knew that! [2] So, today, we're still dealing with "insane fires" that we basically set up a century ago when we let much fuel accumulate in the forest. It's still going to take some time (see: decades) before all this excess fuel sorts itself out. [1] http://ucanr.edu/sites/forestry/files/78651.pdf http://ucanr.edu/sites/forestry/files/78651.pdf page 5 [2] ibid page 2