Wildfire Management 3.0 Maybe? Doing Things a Different Way Maybe?

For those of you who attended the Canadian Emergency Preparedness and Climate Adaptation Convention (CEPCA) in Ottawa last week, it was great to see you again or meet you for the first time. For those of you who weren’t there, it was what I would call “small but mighty”. Not your classic super large event where most of the attendees are on the hunt for hospitality suites and swag. It was focused and the conversations were on point and very meaningful. Putting my innovation hat on for a moment, I definitely saw the meeting of a few minds that will lead to new relationships and ideally, new ideas on improving old ways of doing things. One thing I liked was the blend of technical theatres and strategic conferences. It made it a bit challenging when two or more of my favorite speakers were scheduled at the same time, but nonetheless I made it happen.

I co-presented with Dean Monterey on the origins and current applications of the PPOST tool. For those of you who don’t know it, PPOST is a very simple yet effective method of systematic inquiry that when used properly can get you to an operationally or strategically useful product in a short period of time, at a relatively low cost. For example, we’ve done a number of initial recovery plans for large disasters in recent years and been able to turn out that initial plan in less than 72 hours with a team of 1 or 2 people. PPOST is a perfect fit for the Advance Planning section in any EOC and Incident Management Team. Plus, it has several other applications that we’ve identified and practiced related to emergency management and regular business operations. It’s being promoted through ICS Canada and worth taking a look at to add to your suite of EM tools.

From November 18 to 21, the Building Resilient Communities (BRC) conference will be held in Penticton, BC. They are in transition from the Emergency Preparedness and Business Continuity (EPBC) conference that was held in Vancouver for many years. Basically, they are trying to move the BRC around the province to make it more accessible for the rural communities. I like that idea. It maintains the regional focus of EPBC and spreads the economic benefits a bit over time.

We will be delivering our PPOST presentation at the BRC conference in November again and hope to see many of you there. Those who attended got a nice little “how to facilitate a PPOST session for recovery planning” download to help them understand the methodology better. Expect the same thing, and probably more in Penticton in November. But I wanted to also summarize a couple of thoughts I had after the CEPCA conference because they reinforce, at least to me, that there is a bunch of innovations in the private sector that can help evolve us into what I cheekily call Wildfire Management (WM) 3.0, where WM 1.0 was the traditional Indigenous use and natural presence of wildfire since time immemorial, and WM 2.0 was our attempt to put out all fires to protect lives, property, and crown economic interests in the last several decades. WM 3.0 needs to happen and will happen.

To use a popular quote:  “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results every time”.

I like this quote and use it often because it represents to me the general state of a number of our global emergency management practices. The “this-is-the-way-we’ve-always-done-it” or “this-is-what-the-policy-says” approach to things, very much enabled by all the siloes of bureaucracy and practice that exist. This isn’t a directed criticism. Rather, it is an observation that I think most of us agree with.

And it is very clear that pretty much everyone in the wildfire game, and general public for that matter, realize that something needs to change. We are seeing a lot of expensive reviews and reports commissioned by levels of government that all point to that conclusion, often with technology as a solution.

Let me make something very clear; clear enough so that all of you technology innovators and idea champions don’t lose sight of it. You can have all the best practices, equipment, aircraft and technological innovations in the world, but at the end of the day they all support the person on the ground putting the fire out. Please, please, please don’t lose sight of that when you are developing whatever it is that you have to contribute to a better way of detecting, fighting and managing fires. I would extend that request into all-hazards emergency types as well. Speaking of innovations, just look at what Dan Erikson at his Ops Ready tool does around integration of the many disparate and/or proprietary and/or legacy information systems in a large organization. They automate daily business processes as a core business that also includes internal and external emergency management practices. To me, it makes absolute sense that if you work with a common organizational information system in your daily practices, why not use the same thing for specialized requirements like incident response and recovery?  No learning curves. No fragmented siloes of information sharing. 

Or how about what Doug Campbell and the Range and Bearing team are doing around high altitude balloons loaded with sensors for real-time monitoring of wildfires? That’s not new either. The use of lighter-than-air vehicles for aerial observation has been around since World War 1. The Range and Bearing team just innovated it as part of the solution to today’s needs. They are more than just a cool thing to do in the Napa Valley at sunset. 

And then at CEPCA I attended a presentation by Bill Lakeland from a company called Spexi Geospatial. They generate aerial imagery, just like a gazillion other companies out there. But they have a different approach, and I immediately saw what I believe is one of the more innovative solutions to information gathering and sharing for situational awareness, at least during the initial chaos of when a large seismic event hits the lower mainland area of west coast of Canada. At the heart of my belief is their large network of drone owners that could potentially be mobilized to collect imagery, LiDAR, and probably other types of data over a large area into a common system in a relatively short period of time. I know most of the responder agencies in the greater Vancouver area all have drones, and there is a ton of private sector companies out there with great technology and practices. But to my knowledge, there aren’t any practices or systems in place for the government agencies to provide all this in a coordinated or timely manner outside of sending a fleet of rotary and fixed wing aircraft out on reconnaissance mission. I’m sure people are thinking about it, but in my view if the “big one” hits Vancouver tomorrow, Spexi can provide a better part of the situational awareness solution than others. Crowd-sourcing information capture. Again, not a new practice folks.  Why wouldn’t we be thinking this way?

One of the things I saw at CEPCA, and that I see almost daily in all the conversations and information sharing about the current state of wildfire and disaster management, is that there are a lot of really smart people in really progressive and innovative companies with some really awesome ideas and tools. But many of them are in what I would call a red ocean competitive market (see the Blue Ocean Strategy by Mauborgne & Kim) in that they are trying to dominate their piece of it. The light at the end of the tunnel for me is that many of those players are starting to realize that the total world domination model doesn’t lend well to long term survival (Kodak or Blockbuster anyone?). They are starting to recognize mutual benefit in strategic alliances and developing tools that integrate the expert practices of a number of other organizations and tools towards a better solution to a larger common need. Everybody wins with that approach I reckon.

Here's a thought I had after attending one of the technical presentations at the CEPCA conference by Cole Fouillard from a company called VEXSL, which has the Disasterfield platform. Recall I referred to the Disasterfield tool in a previous article around innovation. Well, if nothing else, my original thoughts were validated when I heard and saw what Cole was saying. He wasn’t there pitching his product as something better than anyone else’s. Rather, he was there promoting the need for a better way to manage emergency events that leveraged existing practices and tools. Something we’re all saying quite openly these days. His focus was on using existing battle hardened and proven technology from the military domain and leveraging over to the civilian side.

For those of you who are a bit squeamish about to committing to a technology in its early stages, I offer that Cole’s approach has many years of proven effectiveness in military organizations. They’ve already done all the heavy lifting for you. You don’t need to reinvent a wheel. You just need to start thinking a bit more globally about things like this. The combination of technologies behind Disasterfield isn’t brand new. Remember when GPS was introduced after many years of use in the military world?  But Cole’s way of thinking about them probably is. There are several companies that are very good at what they do because of many years of operationalized testing and use in the austere environment of battle in difficult places requiring complicated logistics support and absolutely reliable information sharing and communications. Kind of sounds like a bit like wildfire, or broader emergency or disaster response, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I saw a number of companies at the CEPCA conference talking to Cole, and I saw Cole talking to a number of companies at the CEPCA conference. To me, that is an early indicator of some potential new innovative approaches evolving within the private sector  that wildfire and emergency management agencies in general could benefit from, and indeed should be paying attention to. What I know of some of those conversations absolutely reinforces where I think innovations in emergency management need to be going within this historic time of emerging and converging technologies. 

I’m just one person. But I’m fairly sure I’m not the only person seeing this future.

Hopefully we will see some of you at the BRC conference in Penticton November 18 to 21. Happy to share our PPOST observations with you during the presentations. Happy to toss some Wildfire Management 3.0 innovation ideas around with you as well.

Stay safe. Stay informed. Be innovative.