New IDEaS program challenges were released today from the Canadian Safety and Security Program and include a call for proposals for Wildfire intelligence – A common picture for detection and suppression.
The Canadian Safety and Security Program (CSSP) describes the challenges as follows. “The public safety and security environment is highly complex, volatile, and rapidly evolving. The intent of the 2024 CSSP Call for Proposals is to leverage the innovative application of science and technology across the spectrum of safety and security.”
According to the CSSP, the Wildfire intelligence challenge is seeking innovative science and technology (S&T) solutions for:
Developing a “common operating picture” (CoP) for wildfire fighting operations, with emphasis on advancing capabilities that support incident commanders and wildfire fighters; and/or
Development of a “wildfire synthetic environment” (W-SE) for concept development and experimentation and to train IMT commanders. This would be used to enable the execution of wildfire “war games” that closely align to war games for defence in the Department of National Defence/Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) experimentation warfare centres.
In the backgrounder the CSSP said, “The 2023 wildfire season in Canada was unprecedented in terms of its severity compared to the wildfire seasons of the past several years. This increased public concern due to poor air quality and the threat of evacuations of affected communities. The economic impact as well as the effect on the general population (distress, evacuation, smoke) make wildfires one of the worst natural disasters.”
“The effective execution of wildfire fighting operations (from detection to attack to suppression) is one of the key elements in reducing the impact of severe wildfire seasons, which are expected to continue several years into the future due to the effects of climate change.”
“Another key element of wildfire fighting operations is the effective use of wildfire information (remote sensing data, propagation modelling forecasts, resource availability, etc) by the incident management team (IMT) commander, or commanders at provincial headquarters (HQ). However, this wildfire information (also called wildfire intelligence) often arrives at the IMT command piecemeal, presented in a variety of different tools or software. This can create confusion and render the wildfire fighting operations sub-optimal.”
In total eight challenges were issued today. The other challenges include:
Building stronger communities – Understanding and improving mass care in emergencies
Identify and protect – Biometrics for defence and security
Upholding Canada’s sovereignty – Border security and domain awareness
Navigating the future – Fortifying Canada’s critical infrastructure with next gen positioning and timing
Unmask the threat – Advancing technologies for the detection and identification of threat materials
Shields up – Responding to neglected, emerging, and re-emerging diseases
Safeguarding – Identifying and mitigating the risks of small modular reactors and radioactive sources
Applications for the challenges must be submitted by September 18, 2024, 14:00 EDT.
