I began my career in wildfire in 2006 as dispatcher with CAL FIRE.
During that time, I started working on the Computer Aided Dispatch system and learned GIS on the job.
I was predominately working nights at the time and realized I didn’t want to do that the rest of my life.
So, I started working on my bachelors degree.
I was loving GIS so pursued my masters in that field.
I ended up taken a promotion to CAL FIRE’s northern region office where I supported CAL FIRE’s Vegetation Treatment Program Programmatic Environmental Review rewrite, infrared interruption on large fires and serial arson investigations.
Following the Carr Fire, the Camp Fire and series of exhaustive arson investigation cases I made the choice to leave CAL FIRE in February 2020 to spend time with my father who was dying from cancer and to start my own business that originally was going to focus exclusively on the GIS because I was burnt out on wildfires.
The fall after leaving CAL FIRE, my small community was directly impacted by the Zogg Fire.
The small community which I grew up in and still lived in changed overnight.
I had many conversations with neighbors, whom had similar stories about not knowing about the fire until it was almost too late or in the case of five community members it was too late.
My mother implored me to use the skills that I had learned from 13 years with CAL FIRE to help people get the information they need.
Rachael Brady
Because of my background I knew where the data was and I set out on a mission to make that data easily accessible and consolidated into one spot.
I also only want to do authoritative data, no message boards or friend of friend information.
Due to my mapping background and experience, I chose to display the information geographically because it made it easy for people to understand it.
Every aspect of our life relies on geospatial information.
Tobler’s first law of geography “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”, is an excellent lens to look at the geospatial fire problem though.
We are at a point where when we bring all these disparate data systems together, we can quickly and efficiently begin to answer important questions.
I have worked with some great organizations after leaving CAL FIRE from the UCLA, University of Nevada Reno, University at Buffalo and UC San Diego on the academic side of wildfire, to the Western Fire Chiefs, Earth Fire Alliance and the California Fire Safe Council on the non-profit side of the space.
I have played a different role in each of these relationships based on the need of the organization.
The wildfire community is very small, so networking and talking to each other really helps everyone achieve a common goal.
The power of partnerships is truly the key to any organizations’ success and I would argue is the most important aspect to success in the wildfire community.
When organizations work closely with the fire community, be it through a university, a fire agency or a nonprofit, we can begin understanding the complex naissances and actually begin to solve the problems.
Many times people start by asking firefighters to adapt to technology, rather than building technology that adapts to the fireground.
The goal of Wildfire Aware is to get the information into the hands of the people that need the information to make decisions about their lives, family, property and livestock.
I come from a ranching family, when a disaster happens many people don’t understand the reaction time it takes to move livestock to safety, be it load them or move them to an area to shelter in place.
My goal with Wildfire Aware was to build an app that my 90-year-old grandfather who still runs cattle could get a notification on his iPad and decide what he needs to do.
Rachael Brady
Smoke is very deceiving about where it is coming from, so just knowing where the fire is on a map helps in the decision process.
I firmly believe that the academic contributions to wildfire solutions is imperative to the wildfire community overall.
The data we collect through ALERTCalifornia at UC San Diego doesn’t only provide actionable situational awareness in the moment but provide invaluable information to the research community as whole.
While ALERTCalifornia is typically viewed as a wildfire camera network, it is actually an environmental monitoring network.
Every camera within the ALERTCalifornia network is archived from the moment the camera joins the network until it is retired.
Research is essential because it moves us from observation to prediction.
Without rigorous research, technology is just noise; with it, technology becomes a tactical advantage.
ALERTCaliforia has over 1,200 cameras, it is not possible for a human or group of humans to monitor that many camera feeds looking for in most cases smoke.
Rachael Brady
This is where the University can play an important role in developing algorithms and partnership to make the camera feeds actionable and draw an observer’s attention to a camera feed.
The network also provides added benefits to meteorologist who can view localized weather conditions, pilots who can check visibility conditions along their flight route, wildlife research the ability to monitor specific species and many more applications that we at UCSD don’t even know about yet because our data is publicly accessible.
Wildfire Aware just keeps stepping through iterations as we get information from users.
As new data sources become available, I try to add them in meaningful and impactful way.
One piece that has been in the works since the app started that I think we are getting very close to rolling out next year is treating wildfire modeling similar how we treat hurricane modeling.
Tell the public where the fire is headed and when it is likely to get there.
I live by the premise that all models are wrong but some models are useful.
As we have iterated through this concept, we want to be cognoscente of how to display the information to public in an actionable manner while not causing unnecessary alarm.
Rachael Brady
But, as more data sources come online, the fire behavior modeling piece is just going to get better with time in my opinion.
