Quebec’s firefighters are leveraging advanced technology from leading Australian drone company Carbonix to combat a devastating bushfire season. The 2024 bushfire season is set to rival the severity of 2023, Canada’s most intense on record. Last year, an astounding 45.7 million acres were scorched—an area twice the size of Portugal and triple the previous annual record. Currently, the Canadian Rockies are witnessing the largest blaze in the park’s history, with officials reporting that 30% of the town of Jasper has been consumed by flames reaching up to 100 meters at their peak.
Quebec’s northern regions have the peculiarity of a very deep organic soil depth where deeply hidden root fires can continue to smoulder and restart wildfires, labelled “zombie fires”, sometimes weeks after suppression teams have moved on. It’s these blazes that can be the most destructive, especially when located in remote areas where monitoring is difficult and dangerous, which is where Carbonix’s technology comes to the fore.
The company’s advanced all-electric fixed-wing UAS (Uncrewed Aerial Systems), the Volanti, excels in executing rapid aerial surveys across vast and rugged terrain. Equipped with a variety of payload sensors including photogrammetry, IR with Radiometric data, ISR, and multi-spectral capabilities, it recently became the first Australian fixed-wing vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drone to execute a fully automated Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLoS) gathering commercially useful data for a customer.
The Volanti is being used by Quebec-based Exo Drone, a specialist drone operator, and supported by US-based ArgenTech Solutions, a leader in UAS fire monitoring, over the peak of the Canadian bushfire season. It has also undergone rigorous testing in bushfire zones by the ANU-Optus Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence and the ACT Rural Fire Service (RFS) as part of a five-year project to develop long-range UASs to enhance situational awareness for wildfire detection. The UAS proved particularly effective in identifying wildfires sparked by lightning strikes, which, if left unchecked, can pose significant threats.
Carbonix CEO Philip van der Burg said the company was proud to be able to assist with fire-fighting efforts in Canada, reducing the risk to human life this bushfire season. “Our technology is doing a job that is usually done by firefighting crews on the ground or in helicopters, at huge expense, with environmental impact, and at significant risk to human life,” he said. “The aim is for these fires to be spotted in their infancy and contained before they become the mega blazes.”
The two companies began collaborating last year to survey, map, and analyze active wildfires across Canada. Together the companies are integrating advanced sensors and technologies into their work efforts including an Automated Flight Following module that allows the UAS to be flown during the day along with crewed aircraft rather than solely at night that is the typical practice for UAS in Canada and the US.
ArgenTech CEO Brian Veroneau said the company was incredibly proud of the partnerships with EXO Drone and Carbonix. “We’re very pleased with the work we’ve been able to accomplish in Canada,” he said. “Our collective goal is to bring our end-to-end solutions to the rest of Canada to support the wildland fire suppression and monitoring efforts country wide.”
Exo Drone Executive Manager Jean-Francois Pominville said the partnerships are at the forefront of the company’s business expansion strategy. “They have assembled the best team of knowledgeable, dedicated and creative people to provide custom integration and engineering services, combined to the best performing aircrafts available,” he said. “We couldn’t be more satisfied and prouder to have them at our side in our operations as integrated business partners”.
Carbonix estimates the operational and environmental benefits of replacing conventional crewed aircraft (helicopters and light planes) or ground crews with Volanti drones would see an up to 80% reduction in operating cost and up to 98% reduction in CO2 output while improving safety and efficiency.
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