In the mid-afternoon of Saturday, June 1, the Corral Fire ignited near the Lab's Site 300. It made headlines for days and kicked off this year's fire season. The blaze raced across more than 14,000 acres in just 24 hours, incinerated a structure and badly burned two fire personnel.
Early Sunday morning, the Lab's Associate Principal Deputy Director Sandra Brereton reached out to Global Security's Principal Deputy Eric McKinzie and Deputy Principal Associate Director for Operations Donna Mailhot to ask if it would be possible to mobilize some of the Lab's drones to survey Site 300 for residual hotspots, as well as possible damage to Lab infrastructure.
In response, the Autonomous Sensors team readied four drones equipped with thermal cameras, obtained the work-control documents for the flights and then coordinated with the Site 300 Manager Val Dibley for permission to access Site 300 and its restricted air space.
The team also liaised with Cal Fire to confirm that no temporary flight restrictions were in place so as to not interfere with firefighting efforts.
Then, with approval from the Lab's Aviation Safety Officer Kathy Brown, the Autonomous Sensors team was approved to fly first thing Monday morning - conditions permitting.
Over two hours, two drones captured thermal, visible and lidar imagery of more than 350 acres at Site 300. The drones also documented an active, smoldering fire and called the fire department, which arrived within minutes to put out the stray hotspot.
The survey presented an opportunity for the Autonomous Sensors team to rapidly and successfully deploy their equipment and capabilities. In total, they collected 2,808 high-resolution images and 40 gigabytes of lidar data.
"Having this data set will allow us to develop additional tools and capabilities that incorporate imagery that can be used to train our machine-learning and object classifiers for our programmatic work," said Autonomous Sensors team member Jacob Trueblood.
"We are so impressed by everyone's willingness and ability to get this set up, approved and at-the-ready within a few hours on a Sunday," said Brian Wihl, associate program leader. "We appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the fire response and demonstrate capabilities we have been developing. We hope to build on this successful experience and continue to play a role in emergency responses and preventative operations at the Lab and in the local community."
"Because this survey went well, we are now working closely with the Lab's emergency operations center to explore having approvals to fly already in place before the next emergency and exploring having drones integrated into regular Lab emergency exercises," Trueblood said.
Tarabay Antoun, the Energy and Homeland Security (E) program manager in Global Security, said: "I am so incredibly proud of this team and everyone at the Lab who contributed to this effort. This survey demonstrates that we have the tools and the ability to spring into action when there's a crisis. The Autonomous Sensors team has been developing advanced algorithms and integrated sensor payloads for various sponsors for a while now. Now, they have shown that they can support Lab missions as well… It's an exciting time for this team."
"Not only were their efforts actionable and impactful, but their successful survey of the aftermath of the fire at Site 300 demonstrated how our autonomous sensors can be applied to emergency-response scenarios," said Huban A. Gowadia, principal assistant director of the Global Security Directorate. "As we see our technological and security challenges grow and change in the current climate - both meteorological and security-wise - it's exciting and inspiring to see how our colleagues are able to respond to real-world situations with agility. I was so impressed by their efforts."
- Genevieve Sexton
