  Wildfire has had increasing impacts on society as the climate changes and the
wildland urban interface grows. As such, there is a demand for innovative
solutions to help manage fire. Managing wildfire can include proactive fire
management such as prescribed burning within constrained areas or advancements
for reactive fire management (e.g., fire suppression). Because of the growing
societal impact, the JPL BlueSky program sought to assess the current state of
fire management and technology and determine areas with high return on
investment. To accomplish this, we met with the national interagency Unmanned
Aerial System (UAS) Advisory Group (UASAG) and with leading technology transfer
experts for fire science and management applications. We provide an overview of
the current state as well as an analysis of the impact, maturity and
feasibility of integrating different technologies that can be developed by JPL.
Based on the findings, the highest return on investment technologies for fire
management are first to develop single micro-aerial vehicle (MAV) autonomy,
autonomous sensing over fire, and the associated data and information system
for active fire local environment mapping. Once this is completed for a single
MAV, expanding the work to include many in a swarm would require further
investment of distributed MAV autonomy and MAV swarm mechanics, but could
greatly expand the breadth of application over large fires. Important to
investing in these technologies will be in developing collaborations with the
key influencers and champions for using UAS technology in fire management.
