These backcountry places often have no cell service, and paper maps don't have technical difficulties - and are easy/cheap to duplicate and hand out, in addition to being naturally rugged. So this means, expensive non-terrestrial communications, and expensive ruggedized devices.
While this is purportedly the problem firstnet is supposed to solve, I'm skeptical that it will solve it, or that the other issues (technical and otherwise) blocking adoption will be overcome.
There is nothing wrong with two way radios, per se. The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands.
Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving.
We have started to funnel most comms to "tablet command mobile" on our personal phones, which is all text based and ties into GPS map on the phone, etc. - this is very efficient and works very well, but it is heavily dependent on infrastructure we don't control (the mobile phone network).
Anything complicated and we're juggling four bricks again. It's very frustrating, especially in an era of SDRs that could very obviously give me p25+calcord+GMRS all in one simple device.
[1] Pager that the call came in on, county P25 radio that we use all the time, Hi-Band radio to speak on "calcord" to the helicopter, GMRS handheld for traffic control.
What you're running into is agencies not wanting to interop - GMRS is a special case, because its a licensed by rule service (Part 95), but everything else, everything public safety and commercial can all be loaded in one radio, legally and technically (GMRS will technically work, its just not strictly legal - but the rules for Part 95 are widely flouted) - it takes agencies buying multiband radios (they're expensive) - and agencies willing to cooperate to share system keys (and encryption keys) which they loathe to do, because it means giving up control.
Interoperability is a huge issue with public safety, and it wont be fixed by broadband, it will only be fixed when a bunch of people die directly because of it, and then the public demand something be done - these agencies have no incentive to cooperate (quite the opposite, they might get less funding if they did).
Oof, that's painful. Airlift here has their choppers programmed with all the VHF and UHF frequencies for effectively every county in Western Washington.
My phone that connects to multi band WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, wireless charging and 2g, 3g and 4g disagrees with that statement.
I find that paper maps are dramatically better for me than anything on a screen, simply because they can be so much bigger and higher resolution at the same time. It is far easier to get a feel for an area on a table-top sized map printed at high PPI than on my 4K 27" monitors.
As for rapidly tracking the fire perimeters: Despite what the original article says, this mapping process is already happening. You can see the very outlines updated daily, with lots of fine detail, on inciweb.
Is the new fancy tool reliable? Does it truly fit into its adopter's workflow? Is it faster and simpler and more reliable than existing tech? Or is it just shiny and backed by some idiot VC and they're trying to push adoption prematurely?
This idea that its bad that something or someone isn't high-tech needs to die.
But yeah, how did you get from the bedroom to the kitchen today? Was it by futuristic nucular (sic) hoverboard, or did you use million-year-old "walking" technology you damned stuck-in-the-past Luddite?
Firefighting is one of those things that takes place when various types of shit are hitting the fan. No one involved should hitch their wagon to the availability of any advanced-ish technology, including an internet connection.
Firefighters don't need a fucking ipad to cut lines. They need a pickaxe, chainsaws, shovels, etc.
Technology in this type of application is almost never more efficient or better than existing methods, but it gets used when it reduces training costs enough to be deployed.
I worked EMS. If I needed to find a house fast and reliably, I'll use the custom fire department's map binder over any technology solution you can come up with any day and it will be superior in essentially every way.
Real time updates are only gonna work when you have cell reception, which isn't true for a very large fraction of the time here.
They aren’t stuck in the past. None of the solutions presented work reliably under extreme conditions so far.
Any leftover budget is better spent on preventative measures, like clearing brush or controlled burns, not iPads.
Certified intrinsically safe (why not?) and fire resistant tablets with bluetooth and cell radios. We'll pay verizon to put up towers in the middle of nowhere. We'll redesign gloves to be touch sensitive. Redesign helmets to have bluetooth and speakers. Custom software all round. Etc.
After all said and done, we'll realize walkie talkies and paper maps are more reliable.
People who dont risk their lives trying to save others in real, mortal danger, truly need to stop thinking their opinion holds weight in these situations.
All of my brigades trucks have iPads which are useful for accessing maps, running collaborative fireground apps like collector, firemapper or rfsBuddy, etc. All of these things are “nice to have” though. We don’t rely on it for anything we must have, because it fails from time to time.
We use apps like Rover and Bart to manage call outs. They’re great because we can see who’s responding, how far away they are, etc. We also all carry ancient pagers because they’re bulletproof and mobile phones aren’t. They’re served by a hardened transmission network where every tower has backup power in case the grid goes down.
Tech is great but in extreme environments like a wildfire I want to have a paper map with me and I want to know how to use it. Just in case.
Paper maps and walkie talkies might be a good thing.
You can deploy it over mesh technology for places that don't have Internet connectivity, and then backhaul the data to a monitoring center.
Of course it has those LEO/MIL ties which might really be holding it back.
0. https://www.govtech.com/em/safety/Corona-Fire-Department-Enh...
Even if there is the command chain that disrupts direct communication with your "units", the communication down the chain could probably be automated from the interface.
I do REALLY miss Nextel phone to phone though. That stuff was super useful.
Don’t get me wrong. I love tech. Retired Microsoft. Always have to have the latest. Apple Watch 6 on order. Can’t wait for Quest 2... but not on the foreground.
I do miss Nextel though. Did I mention that? Oh. And the InReach (and PLB) stuff is awesome for back country work.
They answers their own question:
Emergency response units talked by two-way radio and sent each other text messages with photos of paper maps, said Kenneth Dueker, the director of Palo Alto’s office of emergency services. “Here we are right in the middle of Silicon Valley,” Dueker said. “Why am I using paper and pencil and a two-way radio when I should be using geospatial tools? It’s very 1920s, frankly.”
and few paragraphs later:
"Glitches in software and outdated maps have been reported in the warning systems used to alert people in the path of the flames during several major fires in the last year."
Mostly non-college people with more worthwhile creativity in their field than typical research PhD's in their typical pursuits, too.
Industrial disaster is a lot different than wildfires in nature or a suburban environment, even though many _suburbs_ have grown up around industrial facilities.
Seems like there could still be a good benefit from more cross-pollination between those most dedicated to saving lives in either situation.
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/22/640815074/verizon-throttled-f...
Utterly not my experience. I was heavily involved on the tech side of firefighting in Victoria, Australia for several years almost two decades ago. It was possibly the most tech-forward set of projects I’ve ever been involved in.
It was also probably the most interesting stuff I’ve worked on in my career.
Should it not just be very similar to them?
I did however, often carry a Baofeng programmed with _all_ the services with which I was likely to interact as a backup: MedEvac, EMS, law enforcement and fire services. Yes, I am a licensed ham operator.
The problem is there is no national emergency interop frequency plan, each state, county and city does things differently.
Each state/county/etc. may have different licensing, but they are also encouraged to program the NIFOG channel plans when space is available on radios.
I'm talking about a combination hi-band, lo-band, GMRS, P25, paging, etc. radio. I should be able to tune National Weather Service on it if I want to.
When I talk about this, ham guys get all huffy about FCC this and that and what kind of anarchy do I want to live in. Whatever.
What I am telling you is that, on the ground, it's a shitshow (with regard to physical radios) and it's frustrating to know that it's a political problem, not a technical one.
Low Band is a special case, because of the sheer antenna size, which is huge, and unwieldily low band handhelds are also near useless.
Ignore the ham guys, they dont know much about part 90 (other than they are correct that the Baofeng Radios are probably not type accepted.).
Brandmeister wouldn't fix anything in the public safety space as nothing in public safety is DMR.
if you have paper in the rain, can't you have a water resistant device? Generally, they are both thing that I wouldn't necessarily associate with doing well in the rain...
At least with paper maps and a #2 pencil, you have a fighting chance in those conditions.
But, paper. I mentioned a brand name. It's wonderful stuff, nothing like the paper you're thinking of. This solution costs a few bucks per person.
https://www.riteintherain.com/
Edit: this "rain" crap is a digression from the "fire" problem. I don't have experience there, but I imagine "the electric infrastructure and cell towers burnt down" is more of an issue... again, paper and pencil wins.
WRT. paper vs. touchscreens and fire, I imagine two extra factors come into play. One, protective equipment may not play well with touchscreens (are there capacitive screen-friendly pads for gloves that won't burn off?). Two, heat in general. Phones and tablets don't like it all that much, and can easily start behaving weirdly and/or shut down when being used in a car in summer, much less next to an actual fire.