In early July, my immediate supervisor and I were requested to assist the Ikahana mission to fly NASA's UAV over the California wildfires.  Myself and Trey Smith drove to the Basin Complex Fire south of Carmel and worked with the fire teams for four and a half days over a two week period.  We were able to interface the laptops of the command personnel to the Collaborative Decision Environment (CDE) in Google Earth (GE).  This allowed them to see aerial views of the fire through the IR imagery on the UAV.  This CDE interface was used in virtually all of the fire camps and was reported to provide a great deal of information to the fire behavior and planning personnel on site.

Information on this deployment can be found here...

The NASA.gov podcasting page with the story can be found at:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/earth_index.html

The home of the video on the Ames website is:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/multimedia/podcasting/podcast.html

In addition to providing logistical support for our end users, we brought two special cameras that assisted in the fire operations.  The GeoCam camera, manufactured by Ricoh, has integrated GPS, compass, and inclinometer.  This allows us to tag the pictures with the location and direction that the camera is facing.  Using software created here at NASA Ames, we are able to place these images in the 3D world of Google Earth.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is worth even more.  Since the software places the picture in a rich 3D environment, we can show the pictures, terrain, and previously mentioned CDE data in the same interface.  This increases the situation awareness and allows field observers to quickly capture rich and context sensitive intelligence while in the field.

Pictures of our deployment in the forward operations unit are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mmicire/BasinComplexWildfire

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Mark Micire of the Robotics Lab spent his summer in California assisting the Ikahana mission to fly NASA's UAV (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle) over the California wildfires. Micire and Trey Smith drove to the Basin Complex fire, south of Carmel, and worked with the fire teams for four and a half days over a two week period. They were able to interface the laptops of the command personnel to the Collaborative Decision Environment (CDE) in Google Earth (GE). This allowed them to see aerial views of the fire through the IR imagery on the UAV. This CDE interface was used in virtually all of the fire camps and was reported to provide a great deal of information to the fire behavior and planning personnel on site. 

In addition to providing logistical support for the end users, Micire and Smith brought two special cameras that assisted in the fire operations. The GeoCam camera, manufactured by Ricoh, has integrated GPS, compass, and inclinometer. This allowed them to tag the pictures with the location and direction that the camera was facing. Using software created at NASA Ames, they were able to place these images in the 3D world of Google Earth. Since the software places the picture in a rich 3D environment, the pictures, terrain, and previously mentioned CDE data can be shown in the same interface. This increased the situation awareness and allowed field observers to quickly capture rich and context sensitive intelligence while in the field.