N5 Sensors, a company using ground-based sensor networks to help detect wildfires and prevent them from spreading, recently demonstrated the effectiveness of its technology in cooperation with the Gilpin County Office of Emergency Management (GCOEM) in Colorado. Now, it’s working on expanding that pilot program into a larger deployment.
“There were five sensors in the original Gilpin County pilot. We expect to expand this to 20 or 25 in the next few months,” said Debra Deininger, chief revenue officer of Rockville, Maryland-based N5 Sensors, in an email to Fierce Electronics.
N5’s network based solution, called N5SHIELD, uses ground-based IoT sensors running on solar or battery power that detect and track the precise location of wildfires, employing either low-power, long-range wireless wide area network technology (LoRa) or cellular, where available, to communicate updates from the sensors to allow firefighters and other response teams to make the best use of their resources. Multi-modal sensor fusion capabilities allow data about both the fire and air quality to be transmitted.
“The communication is fully automated utilizing a software defined architecture,” according to N5's email. “The LoRa radio with multiple backhaul options enables alerting to wildfires even in areas with poor cellular coverage.”
The demonstration in Gilpin County last month targeted a live burn, and according to GCOEM Director Nathan Whittington, “The N5 system worked flawlessly. The sensors were able to detect a flare up 36 minutes before a 911 caller, if this had been a non-contained wildfire we would have had a head start to evacuate people and get resources on scene.”
The expansion now in the works results from GCOEM and the Gilpin County Sheriff signing up for a county-wide deployment to protect the largely rural county and its challenging terrain.
This expansion comes at a time of intense need for wildfire defense solutions, as weather and drought conditions, wildfires are intensifying and expected to impact areas not typically at risk according to a recent United Nations report. The worldwide risk of extraordinary wildfires is expected to rise from 14% by 2030 to 30% by 2050.
In addition to its work in Gilpin County, N5 has furthered its N5 furthered the development of its system through working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate SCITI Labs program, an initiative built in collaboration with the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC), TechNexus and Smart City Works to focus on applying new and existing technologies to public safety and national security needs. N5 also is working with various city, municipalities, park authorities, and state governments to expand pilot deployments both within the U.S. and internationally, Deininger said.
She added that she will be presenting a case study on the Gilpin County pilot program this June at the next Sensors Converge event.
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