Idea explanation

Our group believes that countless lives can be saved by enhancing and anticipating the process of approaching a fire. These phenomena often catches us by surprise and it is crucial to use the most of what technology can give us to try and contain it faster and better.

For that to be possible, there is an absolute need to help people in danger through their smart-phones and at the same time, help any alert get sooner to local firefighters.

Our solution consists in an app, in which anyone can register and that is going to be responsible of processing a fire alert and any information about its nature. Then, it will take the information to people in the area than are possibly endangered and to the local firefighters.

The app has a special interface designed to lodge two different users : Civilians and firefighters. The goal is for the app to help civilians on a fire situation, but also to alert firefighters and help them approach the problem with as much anticipation as possible and with the most of information about the fire.

To differentiate firefighters and civilians, our app requires an account, where firefighters need a special activation code during registration for their local Headquarters. The same account can be used across different devices and all the personal area information is synchronized.

Tools for civilians

The app allows civilians to send alerts of fire on their location. This information would be validated after a certain number of alerts sent for the same region, and this would depend on the ratio of population per area.

On a fire scenario people can also send feedback about obstructed places, type of fire, among other things. This information is useful to help other civilians evacuate and for firefighters to plan how to stop it from evolving.

Other purpose of the app is to alert civilians there is a fire nearby their current location or other places of interest. In addition, a map on the app would show the locations burning and dangerous places. Since all of this would require internet connection, we think is essential to have a service that sends text messages for alerting purposes, not to depend only on the internet connectivity

It’s also important to educate people, so our app has a built-in guide to tell people what they should do in case of fire, appropriated to different situations and locations, given that a fire in a forest is not the same as a fire in a urban area near buildings.

Tools for firefighters

The app has special features dedicated to firefighters. It has information that helps firefighters decide the best way to fight a fire and finally to be immediately aware of possible post-fire dangers.

When a fire is deflagrating in a specific range specified by firefighters, the app shows an alert and guides firefighters to reach the place. On such situation, firefighters have two main goals: rescue people, and stop the fire from spreading.

The last one requires to better understand the fire itself. There are many factors that affect the way it spreads: type of fire, soil vegetation and dryness, stability of wind directions as well as its speed and convective winds generated by fire. Therefore, our app needs data that provides current weather conditions of the region, land information, and based on people’s feedback/notes determine the type of fire and affected areas. With all this information, the app is capable to show safest and strategic routes to control the situation safely. For the first purpose, which is to rescue people in danger, the app would also show where and how many people are in danger and again show the safest and quickest paths to reach them.

The post-fire dangers

As you know, after extinguishing a fire there is a risk of landslides and flooding. Using information such as burn severity, soil characteristics and precipitation volume estimation, it is possible to determine the volume of debris flows. This app would have geographic data and a historic of previous weather conditions to help firefighters determine landslides risks and take preventive measures to ensure populations safety.

Extras

We think thermal cams would help detecting fires in real time. A thermal cam with some extra hardware to send signs to nearest firefighters when signs of smoke and high temperatures are detected. However, this could be extremely expensive since thermal cams have a limited range of 15-20 km, so many of these devices would be required. In addition, such device has potential limitations in urban spaces due the amount of buildings. So, this would only be appropriate, in places of high-level risk where all the characteristics of the location increases the chances of an incident. Here, it would make sense to invest in thermal cams that will work as fire sensors for a better prevention.