David Blankinship, Senior Technology Advisor for the Western Fire Chiefs Association and co-founder of Intterra, joined Bob for Episode 7 to discuss technology in the fire service. David started his fire service career as a Senior GIS Analyst with the Colorado Springs Fire Department. While there, he had the opportunity to be fully integrated in the department’s training to understand field operations more fully, and how to “make things better”, a mantra of sorts that sticks with him still today.
David was fortunate during his time at Colorado Springs to have the freedom and support to develop projects to integrate technology into operations. He speaks in this episode about the importance of field, administrative, and executive staff being willing to work collaboratively, as well as being honest with expectations and abilities, both your own and those of the people around you.
David has been involved in many exciting projects, including wildfire modeling for risk assessment, tactical decision-making, and wildfire behavior. One of his goals is to provide Incident Commanders with the information they need to know before they even get to an incident using sensors and augmented reality. He acknowledges that models need more data inputs to be accurate and useful, which prompted Bob to cite a quote from George E. P. Box, “essentially all models are wrong, but some are useful”. As networks continue to be faster, more secure, and more seamless for first responders, data sharing, and collaboration is also increasing. All of this means the fire service can provide a smooth flow of information between resources to get accurate information to firefighters on the ground more quickly.
We hope you enjoy this episode and listening to all the great work David is doing to advance technology in the fire service. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach us on www.AssumingCommand.com or at impact@upstreamabi.com. If you have any topics or individuals you would like to hear on Assuming Command, let us know. And of course, please subscribe and share our podcast.
Some of the organizations David has partnered in his pursuit of improvement include:
· UC San Diego WIFIRE super-computing group - https://technosylva.com/cal-fire-uses-new-modeling-tech-to-outflank-wildfires/
· National Center for Atmospheric Research Coupled Atmosphere Wildland Fire Environment Model - https://opensky.ucar.edu/islandora/object/technotes:511
· TechnoSylva and their partnership with CalFire - https://technosylva.com/
