The Tech of a Forest Fire essays

The Tech of a Forest Fire essays When I started to work for the Los Angeles County Fire department, this was the last place where I expected to find technology. I was amazed at what kinds of technology that are available and used to fight forest fires. Water is not the only firefighting tool in the battle against a fire. Enter technology. I was contacted by the Los Angeles County Forestry Department. They wanted to create a mobile communications vehicle that they can take up to forest fires. We started brainstorming on some ideas on what we wanted this vehicle to do. They wanted a computer system that can connect to the companys network. The Forestry Department wanted 2 LCD monitors with 3 printers- one of which is going to be a plotter. The vehicle was to contain a digital wireless communications system as well as an analog 2-way radio. Most importantly, it is to contain an infrared system to view hotspots in a wildfire. We named the vehicle The Infrared Van or IR Van for short. We bought an old van that looked like an ice cream truck. It was painted, fire department stickers were added, and the carpenters built shelves in the truck. We added a computer system in the van which contains Windows 2000. We mounted 2 17 monitors on the vans walls. The computer was connected to three printers via a Belkin auto-switch. The printers are an Epson 1520 color printer, a Cannon color printer-scanner-fax machine-copy machine, and an HP 1070 Plotter to make maps. To get rid of cables, we chose to use a wireless keyboard and mouse. We contacted a company called Wescam. Wescam is a visual information systems company that provides the capture of stabilized, high magnification images from moving vehicles, digital and analog wireless transmission of video and data to remote locations. Wescam would provide a camera and a complimentary control panel for the IR Van. Wescams camera is going to mount under th ...