Join the kick-off event as S&T and our partners at the U.S. Fire Administration and across Hawai’i announce a new round of beta testing for wildfire sensors. These devices can detect smoke and use artificial intelligence to distinguish between normal activities (such as barbeques) and smoldering fires, automatically alerting officials to give them more time to coordinate response or evacuation efforts.
Hear from leaders across federal, state and local levels as they outline the important role these wildfire sensors will play in protecting Maui and communities across the Hawaiian Islands from future tragedies like the 2023 Lahaina fires. Guests include S&T Under Secretary Dr. Dimitri Kusnezov, U.S. Fire Administrator Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell, Hawai’i Governor Josh Green, Maui County Fire Chief Brad Ventura, Chief of Planning and Operation for the Hawaii Office of Homeland Security Jimmy Collins, S&T Program Manager Ron Langhelm, and N5 Sensors Chief Revenue Officer Deborah Deininger.
Show Notes
Guests: Brad Ventura, Maui County Fire Chief, Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell, U.S. Fire Administrator, Josh Green, Hawaiʻi Governor, Deborah Deininger, Chief Revenue Officer, N5, Dimitri Kusnezov, Under Secretary for Science and Technology, Ron Langhelm, S&T Program Manager for Community and Infrastructure Resilience, and Jimmy Collins, Chief of Planning and Operation for the Hawaiʻi Office of Homeland Security.
[00:00:00] Brad Ventura: We need every innovation possible, from equipment in the station to the equipment in the field. to help us with early detection. This will also increase our response and capability getting to the scene. The sooner we can get there, the smaller the fires will be.
[00:00:13] Dave DeLizza: This is Technologically Speaking, the official podcast for the Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate, or S and T as we call it. Join us as we meet the science and technology experts on the front lines, keeping America safe. In this special bonus episode, we're marking the one-year anniversary of the tragic Lahaina wildfire by taking you to Maui, Hawai’i, where earlier this year we announced a pilot launch of wildfire sensors that will give officials more advanced warning when fires break out. The goal of this joint effort between S&T, the U.S. Fire Administration and the private sector is to develop autonomous sensors that can detect gases, volatile organic compounds and particulates in the air that indicate that a fire is nearby. The sensors will then automatically alert authorities so they can quickly get to the scene before a wildfire gets out of control and can better coordinate evacuation efforts if needed.
[00:00:58] You heard Brad Ventura, Maui County Fire Chief, at the beginning of the episode explaining the important role technology can play in detecting fires before they spread. He joined the Governor of Hawai’i, Fire Chiefs of the Hawaiian Islands, S&T and the U.S. Fire Administration at a press briefing in March 2024 to announce the start of beta testing for the Wildfire Detection sensors. Next, U. S. Fire Administrator Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell offered her thoughts on the importance of early detection of wildfire outbreaks.
[00:01:24] Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell: Often we as individuals and communities, we learn, unfortunately, from tragedy. As firefighters and public servants, I can tell you that we often vow never again. That helps us personally. It helps us prepare for the next emergency. We're here to announce one more action toward ensuring that Lahaina is prepared, that Maui County is prepared, that Hawai’i is prepared. We're announcing the deployment of new technology that can sense smoke from fire and the particles that the smoke carries, alerting authorities to enable firefighters to move more quickly, to engage, to stop the fire spread. And as the situation might dictate, these sensors will also provide early alert information to inform evacuation. These fire sensors that are developed by the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology are a tool to help communities better prepare for wildfire, especially in fire-prone lands. They are instrumental to building resilience in our communities and a sustainable future of Lahaina and other fire risk areas across the islands of Hawai’i. Across the nation, the U.S. Fire Administration and America's firefighters are focused on an ongoing potential of wildfire in our communities. And we do that by focusing on a three-part cohesive strategy:
[00:02:57] One, resilient landscapes, including the reduction of rapidly burning vegetative fuels around our communities. Number two is having fire-adapted communities, where it is imperative that communities adopt building codes that are better to protect your structures, requiring the use of fire-resistant materials, and reducing combustible attachments like decks and fences and outbuildings in our communities, and adding increased separation where we can between structures that will help reduce that structure to structure spread in the event of a wildfire. The third is having an effective response, including early alerting of ignitions that may occur and quickly dispatching enough trained and equipped firefighters to respond and stop the fire event before it becomes a disaster. As we work with the Hawai’i fire departments and police to place and test these fire sensors, we are grateful to be able to contribute to the resilience of this community as Lahaina certainly continues to recover and Hawai’i prepares for future weather events.
[00:04:12] Dave: As Dr. Lori pointed out, one of the driving factors behind the sensor program is to empower first responders and their communities with early warnings to hopefully prevent large scale wildfires like the ones that impacted the Lahaina community one year ago.
[00:04:24] Those tragic fires took the lives of people and displaced thousands from their homes. We're deeply grateful for the firefighters and first responders who worked so hard to protect their community that day and for their continued efforts to help Maui recover. Let's hear from Hawai’i Governor Josh Green for more on how the sensors are part of the next phase of wildfire protection for the state.
[00:04:40] Gov. Josh Green: We continue to recover, as everyone knows, and to heal as a state. We continue to invest in our many strategies to get back on our feet. Inevitably, Maui will recover completely. I want to take a moment to mahalo the firefighters. They are amazing. I was speaking with the chief today, and I wondered aloud how many firefighters have left service after what was such an incredible and traumatic experience and a heroic experience. It's been virtually none. It's amazing, actually, to imagine that everyone stayed, just like people stayed on duty during COVID and committed their lives to helping our state get through. Same thing happened with these firefighters. So, they deserve our respect alongside the police and everyone else who engaged in the disaster. So we're going to talk soon about our mitigation plans, and I'm sure people want to hear more. But how do we stop the next fires? Our emphasis is on preventing and controlling regrowth of vegetation, which, uh, has been challenging after the recent rainfall.
[00:05:47] But we also have to be mindful that once that vegetation grows, it dries out after the course of about two weeks, as the experts shared with me, and that creates a big problem. And we should all remember that the fire wasn't just in Lahaina, uh, the brave firefighters were fighting fires all across this island, and on that same day, there were firefighters on Big Island, also fighting fires. That's why when we talk about the sensors today, you're going to hear about how they're being deployed here in Maui, but also across the state. One way to look at these is Tsunami detectors in the ocean, right? So, you don't just have one, and you see a wave coming, but you have multiple sensors in different areas where you can see if there's been an earthquake, whether or not a tsunami is being created. And with this technology, just as I'm learning about it with you, you put out a bunch of sensors so you can begin to get early indications. The range is pretty extraordinary on these sensors. The sensors can be more than a mile away. In some cases, this thing could detect fire from five miles away under some circumstances. So, they can begin to get, not just very early indications, but also they may very well, be positioned in multiple areas outside the fire zone, but they will have alerted fire to get into the community.
[00:06:58] Dave: As Governor Green explained, the new sensors will add another layer of support for Hawai’i’s first responders, giving them critical real-time information about the fire locations and where they're heading to better understand how the sensors will work. Let's hear from Deborah Deininger, Chief Revenue Officer from N5 sensors, the private sector partner working with S&T and the U.S. Fire Administration on this effort.
[00:07:19] Debra Deininger: So, we started the project with DHS S&T in 2019. That started with some lab testing. We've had continuous field deployments for two years. In the device we have, we're making 30 measurements. It includes gases, chemicals, particulates, and environmental conditions. That's right in the bottom of the sensor right there. We do edge processing. So, we send little tiny packets of data up to the cloud for the AI to analyze and decide if there is a fire or not. And we also have the IR heat sensor, which will give the firefighters an indication if there are flames or smoldering or what the fire may be. We're using very complex multimodal sensors. We're looking at chemicals and gases and particulates in heat. And just like the human brain can look at a situation and analyze it, we use AI in the cloud to take the information from all of those sensors and synthesize it and recognize a pattern. A pattern that may be associated with a fire that is burning near me looks different than a pattern from another source of poor air quality or a fire that's burning far away. So, we recognize the pattern of a nearby fire and use that to generate our alert.
[00:08:24] We work with the fire department on how they want to be notified, but the system will send a text alert to whoever is opted in, and the text alert will include a link to the location where we believe the fire to be. Once the sensors are installed and connected, they start sending data immediately. However, over the first day and week, they are learning the environment and they'll settle in and become more accurate. So, we may be slightly less accurate the first day if a fire breaks out right away, but we can still detect the fire if it breaks out unfortunately immediately after you deploy.
[00:08:58] Dave: Here's U.S. Fire Administrator Dr. Lori again, with more details about the wildfire sensors and their impact on firefighting efforts.
[00:09:04] Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell: How these fire sensors are going to work is we're going to place them in the higher-risk areas where there might be areas, you know, today we have people who can see the fire, they see the smoke and they'll call 911.
[00:09:17] Well these are going to be put in high-risk areas where there may not be people available to see then call, right? And so it's gonna become like your, your nose is sniffing smoke. These sensors, they're just about 12 inches large, about 6 inches, and they go on poles, around the communities that are more high fire risk and they can actually sense the smoke, they sniff, they are smelling, they take in the smoke and the particulate, the, the small particles that are in smoke, and they can sense whether this might be a barbecue fire, and they can sense whether it might be something else, like a wildfire that has started, and so these sensors are going to be imperative to help us spot ignitions early, and that's key. We know that they can be impactful based on where we put them. And on this particular island, we're going to add some wind sensors with them because we need to know wind direction and these sensors will talk to each other. And so if two sensors are sensing the same particulate and now it's moving and a third picks it up, now we've got direction. And so we'll be able to understand if this fire is moving and get to it quickly.
[00:10:21] Dave: Fire Chief Brad Ventura provided more insight into what makes these sensors unique and how they will be used across Hawai’i.
[00:10:26] Brad Ventura: One of these strings is going to be across Kihei. From your vantage point, it's up to the left here on the is the area we'll be paying attention to. And the second string is in the Oluwalu to Hokiokil area of Lahaina. We need every innovation possible, from equipment in the station to the equipment in the field, to help us with early detection. This will also increase our response and capability getting to the scene. The sooner we can get there, the smaller the fires will be. There's been other technology in the past, mostly with cameras to detect fires on the horizon in the mountainous areas. Today, as you've heard, some of the new technology that's in these sensors includes artificial intelligence, thermal imaging capability, and wildfire gas detection, which means that these sensors aren't just looking, they're also smelling the environment at the same time.
[00:11:16] That's a very important part of this project because at night when the thermal imager capability is working and the gas detection is working, we'll be able to earlier detect fires. These sensors will also be working together. And that's why we place them in strings so that they can talk to each other. They can recognize something and they can verify it on another sensor. And in doing that, this information will be critical to all the county departments because then we'll be able to determine how big a fire is, how quickly it's moving, and what kind of resources we need to deploy and where we need to deploy the resources. The units will be all inclusive and we can mount them basically anywhere we need to—on a water tank, on a light pole, on a utility pole, on the top of this tower here, the police station. We've been having conversations with all of these parties so that we can create that string across the community. They'll have a photovoltaic panel, which will charge a battery and it'll run, and it will be all inclusive in its own package.
[00:12:12] Dave: Solar powered smoke smelling sensors? Sounds pretty cool. Deploying the sensors across Hawai’i as part of an ongoing testing and evaluation process that S&T and the U.S. Fire Administration are conducting to determine what features the final product will need to incorporate before it goes to market. Testing them in a variety of real-world environments provide essential feedback that will inform the final design. Here's Dr. Dimitri Kusnezov, Under Secretary of the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, to explain the importance of evaluating the sensors.
[00:12:42] Dr. Kusnezov: We have done initial trials in 11 states, as well as our bilateral partners in Canada, and we're trying to roll out the next phase of smarter sensors. Part of why we are deploying this here is because the air here is different. You have volcanic ash, you have other conditions. And what smart sensors like this will learn is what does the air feel like here, and what does an anomaly look like, what is a barbecue, what is a fire, what is something else. So, you're not always getting false alarms. You know, broadly what we do with technologies we deploy is a test and evaluation phase, because a lot of these are the first of their kind, they're smarter, they're networked differently, and so we go through phases of testing and development to understand exactly this. How dependent is it on local conditions, on terrain, what is the placement, depending on different places we are testing them. So, we finished one of those phases December of last year with sensor technologies and we're entering this year a different phase of deployment as well where we're going to be testing under different conditions. So it's part of an evolution. This is still development of a smarter technology to give us more advanced awareness. It's not just, this is the final thing. I think this is our next step in a progression of advanced awareness that can help us.
[00:14:04] Dave: We also spoke with Ron Langhelm, S&T Program Manager for Community and Infrastructure Resilience, about the need for testing and evaluation.
[00:14:13] Ron Langhelm: Everything that we're doing—the data collection, the modeling—all of that will add value to every other state, every other deployment of the sensors. The more we learn about, not only the information flow, the modeling, but additionally, all of the different, environments that we're working through, what the impacts are on the sensors. Here we've got salt water, or salt in the air, part of the atmosphere and it varies around the island. Every different material that burns has a different signature to it. So, there's a lot of different parameters. There are a lot of different mixes and matches and every fire is going to be a little bit different.
[00:14:43] Dave: Beyond leading to a better final product, testing the sensors in different climates and environments has another benefit: It will help responders trust that the device can meet their community's unique needs. S&T, the U.S. Fire Administration, and our private sector partners understand how essential that trust is. First responders need to know their gear will work as intended. They don't have time for second guesses in an emergency. Debra Deininger gave us more details about tailoring the sensors based on the input from first responders.
[00:15:08] Debra Deininger: I've been working in environmental detection for over 30 years. I started interviewing first responders about three years ago when I moved into this role, and I've been overwhelmed by how generously they've given their time and their expertise. Expertise to help us understand what we need to do to be effective, what their problems are, how we can help. First responders across the country have been generously willing to test the technology to give us their honest, unvarnished feedback, which lets us improve it. So, they, they've been such a key part of our stakeholder community and it's really appreciated. We don't take anything for granted, so every time we move into a new location, we're watching closely how the sensors respond. Some of the things that are unique about Maui and the Hawaiian Islands is the sea salt, the salt spray, so we've had to make sure that our mounting and our design is hardened to survive. It is not a friendly environment. As well as, there's different vegetation that can burn. So, we will be tailoring our algorithms with the training data to make sure we keep that high accuracy that we've had on the mainland.
[00:16:08] The very last thing we would ever allow ourselves to do is have a lot of false positives that will create more work for our firefighters. We can't do that. We can't allow that. So, the combination of sensors and training gives us that high accuracy, the speed of response, to the fires. What I've learned since I've been involved in wildfire is that information is everything. So, getting the right information at the right time about where the fire is, where it's going, and being able to do that quickly. Those minutes that we can give to our emergency responders are what will allow them to do their jobs effectively.
[00:16:41] Dave: That point about giving responders and early warning is critical. Stopping fires while they're still manageable is one way these sensors can help protect communities in the future. Fire Chief Brad Ventura explained it further.
[00:16:51] Brad Ventura: All of the preparation that our firefighters put in is to be as quick and responsive as they can to a community. They spend countless hours doing everything and drilling and being prepared so that they can get on the truck and get going as quickly as they can. What's important is we get to the scene as fast as we can so that we can catch fires in their phases. There's potential if there's a wildfire right across the street here with all these homes and people driving around that we'll have people doing early detection, but at night at two o'clock in the morning, something odd happens in a field. A lot of the fires that we go to in the evening, especially our small smoldering fires. So that's something that all the particulate sensors would be picking up prior to maybe somebody seeing it and calling 911. So, we're looking at our wildland urban interface, which is the area outside of town where a fire would be starting and then working its way towards the town.
[00:17:40] The way some of these sensors have worked in the mainland and in California is: notification is made and they'll send like a forward responding battalion chief out to a forested area to confirm that the fire is happening and then they'll send the resources behind that. We want to be probably a little bit more progressive because of the winds and our smaller community here. As we develop the response package for these, it'll probably be a notification like what you've heard this morning at the station, and the resources in the district will probably be immediately going.
[00:18:09] Dave: The sensors are just one layer and the response operations. They can provide early warnings in real time information about fire locations, but the real work will still be done by firefighters on the ground. Jimmy Collins, Chief of Planning and Operation for the Hawaiʻi Office of Homeland Security explains.
[00:18:23] Jimmy Collins: I think of them more as like an early warning system rather than changing how fires are being fought, per se. I also think that they can help zero in on where the literal hot spots are, so you don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out where the source or where the central area of the fire is. The more time we have to respond, the more time we have to understand what's going on in our environment, certainly the better prepared we are to make decisions. We are finding ourselves in an interesting environment where wildfire, as incongruous as it might be for someone to look at Hawai’i as a hotspot for wildfires, it is pervasive across the state. The wildfire intensities, the kinds of vegetation that Maui has seen that, that have fueled these kinds of fires, we’re experiencing that across all of the counties, across the whole state, so I think, we're helping to lift each other up as we, learn, different approaches and Maui, I think, is at the forefront of that, unfortunately because of the circumstances they've gone through, but it's allowing us to really fast track some of this effort.
[00:19:21] Dave: As Jimmy reminded us, even though we may think of Hawai’i is a lush green environment. That vegetation is potential fuel for wildfires. Dr. Lori reiterated the importance of considering climate change and other environmental factors.
[00:19:33] Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell: Because as we know, climate change is affecting the land area, the dry, the drought, and the wind speeds here, the different weathers that are happening, the storms here that are highly unusual. And so, we need to get ahead of that. We need to know when these ignitions happen and get as close to them as we can with resources to stop that fire before it becomes a disaster. We are seeing fires in places that have never seen fires and certainly not this early in the year. These massive fires that are burning toward communities. So, we will employ these lessons. It is everything from landscapes that have to be resilient. We've got to remove some of this vegetation that moves so quickly, particularly in drought. We've got to make sure that we have resilient communities, these fire adapted communities, using building codes, stopping to move towards risk that we know are going to be highly risk fire risk areas, and then having our response capability be ready.
[00:20:30] Dave: Next up, Dr. Kusnezov describes the difficulty of anticipating future challenges given a rapidly changing environment.
[00:20:37] Dr. Kusnezov: As Undersecretary at Department of Homeland Security, my role is to look at the 22 operational parts of the Department and ask what is it that we need today? But more importantly, what is it we need for tomorrow? Climate was mentioned by Dr. Lori, and, there is this gradual change we're seeing around the world. Against that, we see these extreme weather events, variations, things that have not happened before. And we think about preparedness at the Department of Homeland Security in terms of how do you get ahead of that? What is it we can do from the science and technology point of view and that can give us more advanced warning of things that we have never experienced before?
[00:21:23] And increasingly today, it's not just one event. It's the fact that fire and wind and flood and hurricanes and atmospheric rivers and collections of these are working together in ways that are impacting us that we have not experienced before. So how do we think about that? How do we get ahead of things that we have not seen or experienced before. What are the tools we need?
[00:21:49] Dave: These are the big questions being asked at S&T as we continue to develop and test new solutions like the wildfire sensors. As the science advisor for DHS and the central hub for research development, testing, and evaluation, we're investigating new ways to help first responders prepare for wildfires and other extreme weather events. Let's hear from this episode's guests one last time to close things out.
[00:22:08] Gov. Josh Green: So, in summary, uh, lots of actions are taken, uh, quietly most of the time to make things safer. We wanted to show that we're bringing new technology together and new vision so that the future is just better for us as we fight fires. We honor those who we lost, and we're trying to help them heal. We appreciate more than anyone what the firefighters went through that perilous day. And hopefully we're going to be able to deliver all kinds of extra safety measures with the best experts in the world, for Hawai’i.
[00:22:39] Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell: What we have learned here, and I often talk about how we learn after disaster. We learn after tragedy and these lessons must be employed in other places. And so, we will go visit with Texas. We'll talk about whether these sensors are necessary there. Look at the lay of the land, what is burned, how the fire moved. Again, how climate change is changing, changing our baseline risk. We are seeing fires in places that have never seen fires and certainly not this early in the year. These massive fires that are burning toward communities. So, we will employ these lessons.
[00:23:12] Debra Deininger: I live in a wildfire-prone area myself and I know too many people that have been affected by devastating wildfires And I am honored and privileged to be able to make a difference in protecting people's lives and property.
[00:23:23] Brad Ventura: We're really excited about the project. We're very grateful for the support from the federal government as well as our state and county government, and we look forward to the success of this program. Mahalo.
[00:23:34] Dave: Thank you for listening to Technologically Speaking. To learn more about what you've heard in this episode, check out the show notes on our website.
[00:23:39] To the Hawai’i Fire Chiefs, thank you for partnering with DHS S&T on this exciting pilot. And to all first responders, thank you for what you do every day to protect our communities. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, YouTube and on social media. At DHS Sci-Tech: D H S, S C I T E C H. Bye!
[00:24:00] Man: See, we, we told Dimitri we barbecue a lot here, and so he's adjusted the technology just to be right for us.