CENIC announces three recipients of 2018 Innovations in
Networking Award for Experimental Applications
In recognition of work to bring advanced IT and
telecommunications to the fight to contain California wildfires,
the WIFIRE, HPWREN, and AlertTahoe projects have been selected as
recipients of the CENIC 2018 Innovations in Networking Award for
Experimental Applications.
Project leaders being recognized are Ilkay Altintas, San Diego
Supercomputer Center; John Graham, Qualcomm Institute, University
of California San Diego; Graham Kent, Nevada Seismological
Laboratory, University of Nevada, Reno; and Frank Vernon, Scripps
Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego
(UCSD).
WIFIRE is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project at
UCSD that has developed real-time and data-driven simulation,
prediction, and visualization of wildfire behavior. During this
past year’s chaotic fires of Los Angeles, Ventura, and San Diego,
WIFIRE’s publicly available fire map was viewed over 8 million
times, while the WIFIRE team was in close communication with fire
response agencies and chiefs from various fire departments (mainly
from Los Angeles and San Diego). WIFIRE provided predictive maps
for the Thomas, Skirball, Creek, Rye, and Lilac Fires in Southern
California and monitored the first responder radio channels and
fire perimeter information to quickly create simulations of the
spread of specific wildfires.
The collection of this crucial data was made possible by the
High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN),
started in 2000 under NSF funding. HPWREN has built out high-speed
wireless networks in San Diego, Imperial, Orange, and Riverside
Counties, enabling hundreds of cameras and meteorological stations
to stream critically important data to servers connected with each
other by the CENIC backbone and providing wide-area wireless
Internet access throughout southernmost California. HPWREN’s remote
sensor network collects data from wildfire cameras, seismic
networks, hydrological sensors, oceanographic sensors,
meteorological sensors, and coastal radar and GPS, providing a
groundbreaking wealth of information that is shared via the CENIC
network.
“As a constant user and monitor of the HPWREN site for many
years, I have enjoyed the evolutions that are taking place. The
Whittier Fire [monitoring Santa Ynez Peak live] really highlighted
the value of the system. I was glued to the camera that day as
the fire climbed the ridge. Great live camera work by your
team! The PTZ cameras and KML data are strong new
assets,” said Dave Fleming, Lookout 23, Forest Fire
Lookout Association, San Diego.
Similarly, AlertTahoe has, over the past five years, provided
discovery, early warning, and monitoring for over 350 wildfires
throughout the Sierras and Nevada’s Great Basin, giving wildland
firefighting managers the essential time and information needed to
move quickly and respond effectively. This system of pan-tilt-zoom
(PTZ) fire cameras and multi-hazard tracking includes time lapse
footage on-demand, smoke investigation, prescribed fire oversight,
wildfire tracking, earthquake early warning, and monitoring of
extreme weather events.
“The safety of my firefighters and the communities they protect
is my priority, so having more information about a fire before we
encounter it is an added safety measure that benefits our first
responders,” said San Diego Fire-Rescue Chief Brian Fennessy.
“Having access to a live view of our highest-risk fire areas will
greatly improve situational awareness, our coordination with CAL
FIRE, and allow for quicker response times, better response
strategies, and faster evacuation orders to ensure our communities
are better prepared in the face of a wildfire. During the ignition
of the Church Fire, I could watch the smoke on my phone – the
color, the direction – and immediately knew the resources that I
needed to deploy and the time they would be engaged. Furthermore,
the crews could watch how the fire progressed on their tablets as
they approached the fire, providing real-time situational
awareness. These fire cameras are a game changer.”
WIFIRE, headed by Ilkay Altintas, merges observations, such as
satellite imagery and real-time data from sensors in the field,
with computational techniques like signal processing,
visualization, modeling, and data assimilation, to monitor
environmental conditions and predict where and how fast a wildfire
will spread. The project is funded as part of the NSF Hazards SEES
program, which enhances sustainability using advanced technologies
and new methods. Participants in WIFIRE include researchers from
the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the California Institute
for Telecommunications and Information Technology's (Calit2)
Qualcomm Institute, and the UCSD Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering (MAE) department. Also participating in the project is
the University of Maryland's Department of Fire Protection
Engineering.
“Wildfires have become a major threat to both Northern and
Southern California. The WIFIRE, HPWREN, and AlertTahoe
projects are now actively collaborating with each other, the
first-responder community, and CENIC to give California new digital
tools to reduce the wildfire danger, including early
detection/warning, situational awareness, predictive simulations,
and first-responder planning. Their pioneering results set the
stage for wildfire threat reduction via wireless
extensions from any CENIC-connected entity in California,” said
Larry Smarr, Director of the California Institute for
Telecommunications and Information Technology.
While working at UCSD’s Scripps Institution for Oceanography,
Graham Kent was a strong collaborator on HPWREN. When he left to
become a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, he founded
AlertTahoe, a fire camera system that uses a private, high-speed
Internet microwave communications system for real-time
fire-spotting and monitoring. AlertTahoe provides coverage of the
Lake Tahoe Basin and surrounding mountains, thousands of square
miles of northern Nevada’s Great Basin, and regions as far south as
Bishop, California, in the eastern Sierra.
The networked fire cameras discovered seven wildland fires in
the Tahoe basin in AlertTahoe’s inaugural two-year deployment, and
in 2017 alone provided discovery, early intel, and/or monitoring of
207 others. The HD/4K fire cameras are remotely controllable for
tilt, pan, zoom, and, for some new cameras, continuous
rotation.
"The cameras are strategically sited to provide a landscape
overview," said Paul Petersen, Fire Management Officer, Nevada
Bureau of Land Management. “All cameras are equipped with on-demand
time-lapse functions to allow playback throughout different time
periods. This allows dispatchers and duty officers to play back the
camera feed to detect anomalies and gather a local picture of what
is happening, and has happened, within the field of view of the
camera. This camera network gives fire managers a real-time picture
of what is happening from both a weather and fire behavior
standpoint. We have almost 500 people looking at the public site at
various times, and 12 duty officers and dispatchers have access to
the cameras for tactical fire response 24/7.”
In 2017, AlertTahoe experimented with machine-vision auto-detect
software, which is designed to automatically detect and report
smoke. In 2018, Kent and co-founder Ken Smith will join forces with
Doug Toomey at the University of Oregon to expand the system into
Oregon and Idaho. Similar efforts with Neal Driscoll at UCSD are
focused in the San Francisco Bay Area and Napa regions.
“The resources provided for our first responders and the public
have made possible swift, effective fire-fighting and evacuation
strategies, and potentially saved countless lives,” said Louis Fox,
President and CEO of CENIC. “The impact that these projects have
made in keeping Californians, our communities, and our natural
resources safe from wildfires is profound. The projects we are
recognizing with this award have highlighted the usefulness and
value of wireless extensions of the CENIC fiber network and set the
stage for continued support and scaling up of these and other,
related wireless initiatives.”
The CENIC Innovations in Networking Awards are presented each
year at CENIC’s annual conference to highlight the exemplary
innovations that leverage ultra-high bandwidth networking,
particularly where those innovations have the potential to
transform the ways in which instruction and research are conducted
or where they further the deployment of broadband in underserved
areas. The CENIC conference will be held March 5 – 7, 2018, in
Monterey, California.
About CENIC: www.cenic.org
CENIC connects California to the world—advancing education and
research statewide by providing the world-class network essential
for innovation, collaboration, and economic growth. This nonprofit
organization operates the California Research and Education Network
(CalREN), a high-capacity network designed to meet the unique
requirements of over 20 million users, including the vast majority
of K-20 students together with educators, researchers and
individuals at other vital public-serving institutions. CENIC’s
Charter Associates are part of the world’s largest education
system; they include the California K-12 system, California
Community Colleges, the California State University system,
California’s public libraries, the University of California system,
Stanford, Caltech, the Naval Postgraduate School, and USC. CENIC
also provides connectivity to leading-edge institutions and
industry research organizations around the world, serving the
public as a catalyst for a vibrant California.
About WIFIRE: https://wifire.ucsd.edu/
WIFIRE is an NSF-funded project at UC San Diego that has
developed real-time and data-driven simulation, prediction, and
visualization of wildfire behavior.
About HPWREN: http://hpwren.ucsd.edu/
The High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network
(HPWREN) has built out high-speed wireless networks in San Diego,
Imperial, Orange, and Riverside Counties, enabling hundreds of
cameras and meteorological stations to stream critically important
data to servers connected with each other by the CENIC
backbone.
About AlertTahoe:
AlertTahoe is a fire camera and multi-hazard tracking system
that includes smoke investigation, prescribed fire oversight,
wildfire tracking, Earthquake Early Warning, and monitoring of
extreme weather events.
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CENICLee Ann Weber, 714-220-3465lweber@cenic.orgorMelissa Lucas,
714-220-3405mlucas@cenic.org