Related Information: In addition to mapping fires, CSC played an active role in fighting the California wildfires. Read about CSC’s work with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention. Learn about CSC’s government practice. Contact Us and Let Our Experience Help You Produce Results.

The October 2003 wildfires that ravaged California were the worst in the state’s history. They would have been more destructive, however, if not for Phoenix, a revolutionary infrared system developed by CSC.

The wildfire challenge

In the foothills and mountains of Southern California, the buildup of chaparral, oak and pine, much of it weakened by drought and disease, has been increasing throughout the past century.

During dry weather periods, the buildup of this “fuel” is highly susceptible to ignition. Combined with high Santa Ana winds — hot, dry winds that blow the fires toward California’s large urban areas — the results can be devastating.

During October 2003, 15 major wildfires burned through more than 750,000 acres of forest. According to the San Bernardino Fire Information Joint Information Center and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 3,640 homes, 33 commercial properties and 1,141 other structures were destroyed, causing billions of dollars in damage.

Infrared detection

Infrared sensors and processing equipment mounted in a jet help map and control wildfires.

In the firefighting business, the strategy for suppressing wildfires is clear: A fire can be doused much more easily if located when it’s small. Moreover, accurately mapping boundaries of active fires provides invaluable information for their containment.

Since the 1960s, infrared technology has played a central role in helping firefighters pinpoint and track wildfires. By equipping planes and helicopters with infrared sensors, pilots are able to fly over large swaths of ground recording data that allows analysts to determine the most effective strategies to stop fires in their tracks.

But as more Californians build their homes in forest areas — and as these homes have, in effect, become another form of fuel that feeds out-of-control wildfires — the need for more advanced fire-detection technology has become pressing.

“The problems with the older technologies were that they offered no way to capture the infrared data digitally and transmit it to the fire camps where analysts monitor the fires and define their strategies,” says David Chamberlain, manager of systems integration for the Army business unit in CSC’s federal sector defense group. “In the past, the data was printed out on filmstrips, and, more recently, paper. The aircraft had to land and the printouts then had to be driven to the fire camps where the analysts were located, usually one to three hours away.”

To design and implement the infrared fire detection technology of the future, federal forest agencies turned to CSC.

Military technology transfer

CSC plays a key support role at the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM)’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. In 1999, CSC signed a $740 million contract to help AMCOM advance air and missile defense by engineering, modeling and analyzing a wide range of emerging technologies.

“Through AMCOM, we provide technical support to the USDA Forest Service and the National Interagency Fire Center to advance their infrared capabilities for wildland fire suppression,” says Jerry Bosley, CSC Vice President of Army tactical systems and technology. “The idea is to leverage our experience with infrared systems, signal processing, image processing and real-time signal acquisition technologies used in missile systems, then apply this technology to fighting fires. The most recent result is an advanced infrared fire-detection system called Phoenix.”

Fighting fire with Phoenix

Phoenix can detect heat sources the size of a volleyball from 10,000 feet and depict them in a 3D rendering.

The Phoenix Airborne Infrared Wildland Fire Detection and Mapping System, or simply Phoenix, relies on an infrared sensor mounted on the underbelly of planes to detect smoldering trees, embers and kindling 10,000 feet below. At that altitude, it can detect accurately heat sources the size of a volleyball within a six-mile view.

Phoenix has a triangular mirror that spins at 4,000 revolutions per minute to generate 200 scan lines per second across a 120-degree wide field of view. As it spins, it picks up infrared waves from the ground and filters these waves through more mirrors. The rays are then read by two ultrasensitive detectors that are cooled with liquid nitrogen. The combination of the two signals provides accurate detection of heat.

While the system is similar to infrared systems used by the Forest Service for decades, Phoenix processes the information faster, allowing a wider field of view and higher scanning resolution. That, in turn, allows planes to cover a fire area in fewer passes and less time. After digitizing the signals, Phoenix uses a high-speed Digital Signal Processor (DSP) to filter and compute the fire detection mathematically from both channels for every sample in each of the 200 lines per second.

“The key is being able to segment the software so that we can process the previous scan and acquire the new scan at the same time,” says Chamberlain.

Chamberlain developed the software specifically to tie the Forest Service’s infrared hardware to available computing platforms and create the output products.

“Phoenix is able to create Level-2 rectified and geo-located imagery in real-time,” says Chamberlain. “In other words, it can produce highly precise imagery that is corrected for aircraft position and altitude, as well as for the geometric distortions that are inherent in infrared line scanner systems — without the need for additional processing.”

To further improve the precision of the data, the Phoenix system removes distortions caused by terrain variations on the ground. This Level 3 "ortho-rectified" imagery is created by post-processing in a matter of minutes.

“Other infrared systems are incapable of such speeds across such large areas,” says Chamberlain. “They typically collect single channel data over small areas, then go through extensive post-processing. Delivery times typically take hours, not minutes.”

One of the most important advances Phoenix delivers is its ability to downlink data digitally. With this capability, accurate imagery can be delivered to a ground station within minutes of being collected. While this reduces the need to hand-deliver hard copies greatly, it also reduces the critical time between collection and analysis.

“If even one-third of the missions can be down-linked, then the benefit of not landing is considerable in time, cost and safety for the pilots, crew and aircraft,” says Chamberlain. “It also means that the fire bosses will be able to make tactical decisions much more quickly and be better able to direct fire suppression efforts.”

Minimizing the October fires

Phoenix made its debut during the 2003 summer fire season. After demonstrating its ability to improve fire-detection speed and accuracy significantly, it was well poised to play a key role when 15 major wildfires were raging in Southern California last October.

“There is no question that the October fires were the worst in California’s history, but they could have been much worse,” says Woody Smith, a National Infrared Operations technician. “Phoenix’s processing capabilities allowed us to image 700,000 acres of forest per hour in real time with digital data, while our prior infrared systems could cover only half of that. Add to that the ability to get accurate data to our analysts much faster and there is no telling how much ground Phoenix helped us to spare.”