Firefighter Location, Tactical Communications and Weather Data Deployed for Immediate Tactical Coordination, Lifesaving Situational Awareness

RoGO Communications, a company founded to develop lifesaving technology for firefighters and first responders, today launched a new DropBlock 2.0 to track the location of firefighters and equipment.

The new satellite communication DropBlocks are smaller in size and weight to be carried by wildland firefighters, often hiking into the wilderness in remote areas where cellular networks are typically not available.

DropBlocks also share hyper-local weather information from portable weather stations, including wind speed, direction, temperature, humidity and other IoT sensor data. Immediate tactical coordination and lifesaving situational awareness is enabled by tracking the location of crews, equipment and resources including bulldozers, water tenders, fire engines, high-value structures, medical evacuation rescue and makeshift water resources.

“Based on feedback from wildland firefighter field trials, the new DropBlocks’ reduced size and weight better enables immediate deployment to support the initial attack of a wildfire, the time of most dangerous risk to firefighters,” said RoGO Chief Executive Officer Rod Goossen. Along with his brother Derek who served on teams fighting more than 100 wildfires, they founded the company to develop technology that can save lives of wildland firefighters.

Task Force Leaders, typically working from their vehicle to coordinate four to six groups of crew resources, are provided a broadband satellite terminal with high-bandwidth satellite data connectivity to receive DropBlock GPS locations and weather data from handcrews and equipment, which is also shared with Incident Command.

RoGO satellite-based products and services operate anywhere in the world and support firefighting and field trials across local, state and federal agencies in the Western United States. RoGO services also support first responders in other disasters including hurricanes, floods, and search and rescue teams.

The Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management field tested DropBlocks with six wildland fire handcrews, suggesting the smaller size and adding point-to-point data communications.

A new smartphone app in development will provide point-to-point communications and tactical collaboration at the edge in addition to sharing location and weather data.

Source: BUSINESS WIRE