Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program to hold fire training prize challenge

By Christa Yates, Staff Writer

 

The Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) held a tabletop exchange at the Central Florida Tech Grove, May 22, to refine the scope of an augmented and virtual reality-based prize challenge that will be released in mid-June.

 

The goal of the upcoming challenge, collaborative project order (CPO) 22, is to expand firefighting capabilities and training with the use of virtual and augmented reality, focusing on redirecting smoke and fighting fires caused by military munitions detonated in training exercises and beyond.

 

“We’re going to come up with some really great ideas and solve the problems that [firefighters] are faced with,” said Chris Libutti, director of the Tech Grove. “The cool thing about this process is that it allows all kinds of ideas to come to the surface that we’d never thought of, that we’ve never seen, and maybe that we never even knew could be applied to this situation.”

 

The subject matter experts expressed keen interest in leveraging immersive tools to train after interviewing eight wild-lit fire experts and running a technology scan of government and commercial capabilities, according to Sara Hand-Herald, CEO of Spark Growth and one of the speakers at the exchange. “It’s not just about realism, it’s about narratives. [There is a] desire for before-and-after visualization, like we [can see in pictures of] prescribed burns.”

 

According to Kevin Hiers, program manager at SERDP and Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP), the Department of Defense (DoD) manages 28 million acres of land and wetlands that support warfare and military missions.

 

“The DoD [has] among the highest wildfire loads of any federal landowners because military mission ordinance are pretty effective fire-starters,” Hiers said. “[The DoD uses] more prescribed fire per acre owned than by any other federal agency because we use prescribed fire to mitigate wildfire risk in order to sustain the military mission, both in testing and training.”

 

Training and education surrounding prescribed burns is a key factor in this prize challenge, being cited as one of the best methods of mitigating the ecological impact of fires.

 

“For decades, there was a notion to not let anything burn and to put [fires] out right away,” Hand-Herald said. “There’s been a change in this piece of ecosystem management, and subject matter experts say we need to not only educate people in the field, but our policy and decision makers.”

 

“We’re trying to do an accelerated tech transition to fire managers on the ground, both within the DoD, but also across our inter-agency partners,” said Hiers.

 

After the discussion, participants had the opportunity to speak with subject matter experts to address specific questions regarding the challenge.

 

CPO 22 will be released on June 16.