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Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past

theguardian.com

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Re: Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past

#11

Post by rsync »

Aloha wrote: post #2

As someone who builds telecommunications systems for first responders, I'm not convinced that a chat service, and online technology is better than narrowband 2-way radio, and paper maps. These backcountry places often have no cell service, and paper maps don't have technical difficulties - and are easy/cheap to duplicate and hand out, in addition to being naturally rugged. So this means, expensive non-terrestrial com…

I am a firefighter/EMR in California.

There is nothing wrong with two way radios, per se. The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands.

Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving.

We have started to funnel most comms to "tablet command mobile" on our personal phones, which is all text based and ties into GPS map on the phone, etc. - this is very efficient and works very well, but it is heavily dependent on infrastructure we don't control (the mobile phone network).

Anything complicated and we're juggling four bricks again. It's very frustrating, especially in an era of SDRs that could very obviously give me p25+calcord+GMRS all in one simple device.

[1] Pager that the call came in on, county P25 radio that we use all the time, Hi-Band radio to speak on "calcord" to the helicopter, GMRS handheld for traffic control.

Re: Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past

#12

Post by FireBeyond »

rsync wrote: post #11
Aloha wrote: post #2

As someone who builds telecommunications systems for first responders, I'm not convinced that a chat service, and online technology is better than narrowband 2-way radio, and paper maps. These backcountry places often have no cell service, and paper maps don't have technical difficulties - and are easy/cheap to duplicate and hand out, in addition to being naturally rugged. So this means, expensive non-terrestrial com…

I am a firefighter/EMR in California. There is nothing wrong with two way radios, per se . The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands. Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly whi…

> Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving.

Oof, that's painful. Airlift here has their choppers programmed with all the VHF and UHF frequencies for effectively every county in Western Washington.

Re: Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past

#13

Post by yardie »

Flashpoint for paper is 450°F. My tablet shuts down if I take it for an afternoon at the beach and forget to keep it under the umbrella.

They aren’t stuck in the past. None of the solutions presented work reliably under extreme conditions so far.

Re: Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past

#14

Post by tomc1985 »

I really hate seeing articles like these. There are many reasons why groups may not choose to participate in the endless technology death march that is updates and instability.

Is the new fancy tool reliable? Does it truly fit into its adopter's workflow? Is it faster and simpler and more reliable than existing tech? Or is it just shiny and backed by some idiot VC and they're trying to push adoption prematurely?

This idea that its bad that something or someone isn't high-tech needs to die.

Re: Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past

#15

Post by superhuzza »

frogblast wrote: post #4
Aloha wrote: post #2

As someone who builds telecommunications systems for first responders, I'm not convinced that a chat service, and online technology is better than narrowband 2-way radio, and paper maps. These backcountry places often have no cell service, and paper maps don't have technical difficulties - and are easy/cheap to duplicate and hand out, in addition to being naturally rugged. So this means, expensive non-terrestrial com…

I'm not involved in firefighting, I just spend a lot of time with maps planning out hikes: I find that paper maps are dramatically better for me than anything on a screen, simply because they can be so much bigger and higher resolution at the same time. It is far easier to get a feel for an area on a table-top sized map printed at high PPI than on my 4K 27" monitors. As for rapidly tracking the fire perimeters: Despi…

Same in my experience, for both climbing and hiking paper maps and topos are much better than digital.

Re: Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past

#16

Post by drcoopster »

exabrial wrote: post #10

As someone who has helped with a fair share of controlled burns... yes: two-way radios on a repeater with backup batteries is excellent. Any leftover budget is better spent on preventative measures, like clearing brush or controlled burns, not iPads.

And raking the forests, of courses.

Re: Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past

#17

Post by hatsunearu »

rsync wrote: post #11
Aloha wrote: post #2

As someone who builds telecommunications systems for first responders, I'm not convinced that a chat service, and online technology is better than narrowband 2-way radio, and paper maps. These backcountry places often have no cell service, and paper maps don't have technical difficulties - and are easy/cheap to duplicate and hand out, in addition to being naturally rugged. So this means, expensive non-terrestrial com…

I am a firefighter/EMR in California. There is nothing wrong with two way radios, per se . The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands. Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly whi…

One of the proposed benefits of 4G/5G is that they can make microcells that can do exactly that, with the client devices being regular phones.

Re: Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past

#18

Post by aschatten »

Another "boeing still uses floppy disk" article, but this one reads like an ad for the company mentioned.

They answers their own question:

Emergency response units talked by two-way radio and sent each other text messages with photos of paper maps, said Kenneth Dueker, the director of Palo Alto’s office of emergency services. “Here we are right in the middle of Silicon Valley,” Dueker said. “Why am I using paper and pencil and a two-way radio when I should be using geospatial tools? It’s very 1920s, frankly.”

and few paragraphs later:

"Glitches in software and outdated maps have been reported in the warning systems used to alert people in the path of the flames during several major fires in the last year."

Re: Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past

#20

Post by Aloha »

rsync wrote: post #11
Aloha wrote: post #2

As someone who builds telecommunications systems for first responders, I'm not convinced that a chat service, and online technology is better than narrowband 2-way radio, and paper maps. These backcountry places often have no cell service, and paper maps don't have technical difficulties - and are easy/cheap to duplicate and hand out, in addition to being naturally rugged. So this means, expensive non-terrestrial com…

I am a firefighter/EMR in California. There is nothing wrong with two way radios, per se . The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands. Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly whi…

There is nothing in Part 90 that prevents a multi-band device, Motorola, Harris and Kenwood both sell multiband P25 devices (V/U, U/800, V/LTE, et al). Motorola, Harris and Kenwood (tait as well) also support multiple trunking/signaling systems on the same device as well.

What you're running into is agencies not wanting to interop - GMRS is a special case, because its a licensed by rule service (Part 95), but everything else, everything public safety and commercial can all be loaded in one radio, legally and technically (GMRS will technically work, its just not strictly legal - but the rules for Part 95 are widely flouted) - it takes agencies buying multiband radios (they're expensive) - and agencies willing to cooperate to share system keys (and encryption keys) which they loathe to do, because it means giving up control.

Interoperability is a huge issue with public safety, and it wont be fixed by broadband, it will only be fixed when a bunch of people die directly because of it, and then the public demand something be done - these agencies have no incentive to cooperate (quite the opposite, they might get less funding if they did).

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