Partners work to evaluate wildfire sensors

The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) recently selected four new industry partners to participate in a new wildfire sensors workstream of the Smart Cities Internet of Things Innovation (SCITI) Labs.

SCITI Labs will work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and state and local fire services to incorporate feedback and assessment data into market-ready products. This streamlines the commercialization process by ensuring the technologies are useable, affordable and scalable.

“Wildfires continue to threaten lives, homes and critical infrastructure,” Jeff Booth, S&T Sensors and Platforms Technology Center director, said. “The goal of this effort is to identify where technology solutions can be brought in line with other commercially-available products for home and property security. We want to identify a development roadmap that works hand-in-hand with a commercialization path that advances not only the science and engineering aspects of this technology, but also the availability of these capabilities to the broader homeland security enterprise – from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to state and local emergency management to civilians.”

The workstream will focus on geographically targeted notifications and warnings, fire characteristics, tracking the fire perimeter, and the real-time and continuous identification of heat sources and smoke.

The industry partners are Ai4 Technologies, Breeze Technologies, N5 Sensors, and Valor Fire Safety.