The USDA’s Forest Service posted an article and video showing off their adoption of the Team Awareness Kit for wildland forest fire fighting.
From the article:
Within the last the last five years, there’s been a dramatic and ever-increasing role of technology in wildland suppression efforts. Live data can be disseminated and streamed to firefighters on their smartphones out on the fire line, through a program called Team Awareness Kit.
“It’s an app that you can put on your phone, tablet or computer. Basically, it’s a hub for all the information, so the firefighters can just open up a phone and go; everything’s right there.”
The Tactical Awareness Kit application can also be used by fire managers to inform evacuation plans and fire suppression activities.
Although currently in beta testing, the Team Awareness Kit or something similar will be a game changer for incident managers and firefighters out on the fire line, informing decisions on anything from evacuation plans to suppression strategy and tactics.
