as fires burn all across the state — a new invention in santa fe may revolutionize the way they’re fought. it takes terrain — weather — and even traffic reports— and mixes them all together in a sandbox that acts almost like a hologram… you have to see it to believe it — and gadi schwartz provides a look you’ll see only on four. don’t let the star wars look fool you- this is just an ordinary sand box — but with the help of a projector and digital technology — it becomes an extremely accurate model of a national forest in just minutes. heres how it works the computer scans it to bring back the information that corresponds to satellite imagery – color-coded areas show where to move the sand to create mountains — peaks — and valleys. where its purple here you really need to stack it up its a peak where its blue we want to pull it way up too. once the topography is set we can actually start the simulated fire by using an ordinary lighter a camera recognizes the flame — then triggers a computer program which uses wind, weather, and vegetation data for an simulate how the flames will move. we tell the slurry bomber to start here and dump in this direction. the simulator doesn’t just help fire crews — it can help authorities coordinate and evacuation plan by accounting for traffic backups and road closures. this allows the police to also train on the fire noting that if there is a backup from a fire in this area to put an officer here at this intersection to prevent backup and keep people out of harms way. the sim table also let’s crews study past fires like never before. 2008’s trigo fire burned for weeks — and destroyed homes in the manzano mountains. the trigo fire started back on april 18th. here it is with the exact locations of where it broke across the mountain- where it was held back- and what caused it to spread so fast. it blew out all the way up and destroyed homes. the developers of the sim table — are now working on running the system on things like i-phones this small projector is able to project in the wilderness. “most excitingly its brining new technology into firefighting to saving lives, educating communities.”
Duration : 0:2:28
[youtube nB3gVTG2cLI]
July 1st, 2010 at 5:41 am
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