Until now, arsenals for fighting wildfires included sweat, shovels and dirt, brush removal, and airdropped fire retardants. But as the wildfire season approaches this year, firefighters throughout the Western U.S. will use another weapon to battle blazes: Compaq’s award-winning iPAQ Pocket PC.
Compaq Computer Corporation and ESRI, the world leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, have introduced Compaq’s hot-selling iPAQ Pocket PC with GPS functionality and ArcPad, ESRI’s handheld GIS software, to the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It’s a step forward in outsmarting wind-whipped fires and minimizing destruction to the environment, property and lives.
The iPAQ Pocket PC has already proven it meets the demanding requirements of fire perimeter mapping. Mapping capabilities of the iPAQ Pocket PC with ArcPad software helped contain the notorious six-day Viejas Fire, which burned more than 10,000 acres, caused $1.8 million in property damage, and triggered evacuations of over 1,000 residents in the Cleveland National Forest, east of San Diego in January of last year. More recently, the technology has enabled firefighters to outwit several wildfires near the Mexican border and in the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California.
Using the lightweight, easy-to-use iPAQ Pocket PC with ArcPad software, a helicopter can fly over the fire, collect immediate data, and digitally map the geographic coordinates of a fire in real time. Field data is then transported back to GPS technical specialists at the fire command center, where it is downloaded on a computer network and can be wirelessly accessed with iPAQ Pocket PCs by firefighters in the field.
As the fire season approaches, it is anticipated that digital mapping of active wildfires using the iPAQ Pocket PC will be used increasingly, alerting firefighters to possible dangers by providing information about the fire’s behavior and the direction the fire is moving, in relation to property.
Weighing in at less than one pound, the iPAQ Pocket PC fits easily into a flight suit. Previously, firefighters had to haul around a 10-pound PC, a two-pound GPS receiver, cell phone, cables, and batteries to obtain up-to-the-minute information provided by this new technology.
An internal lithium-ion battery on the iPAQ Pocket PC lasts an average of 10 hours; its color display can be read in bright sunlight; and map data can be stored on 32 or 64 megabytes of RAM. Wireless capability is achieved by sliding a PC card expansion pack onto the iPAQ.
