From Feb 21 - Mar 5, 2021, members of NASA's
STEReO team traveled to Phoenix, Arizona to support an initial field demonstration of several project components aimed at improving wildland fire aviation operations. This project activity was co-located with the US Forest Service’s annual National Aerial Supervision Training Academy (NASTA) event, in which trainees flying over a simulated wildland fire incident exercised communication procedures critical for effective fire suppression. Over the course of two weeks, the STEReO team joined their
US Forest Service project partners at the NASTA flight training site; a remote, mountainous area that lacked a reliable communications network, characteristic of many disaster event environments. This field demonstration was a valuable opportunity for the STEReO team to exercise the feasibility of using a portable, field deployable UAS traffic management and asset tracking system in a degraded communication environment, producing a common operating picture as seen on the STEReO displays. Working with the USFS partners, the STEReO team crafted a scenario that captured a growing fire and the movement of the ground and air response over time. The scenario, showing the fire at different points in time as it progressed, along with the many assets that formed the response including simulated UAS operations and live ADS-B of the aircraft participating in the training activity were then fed into the field deployable system, allowing participants to visualize the incident unfolding on the STEReO displays.
