Firefighting in the future

[Lucas]

Last year NIST published the so-called "Research Roadmap for Smart Fire Fighting":
http://www.nist.gov/el/fire_research/201506_smart_fire_roadmap.cfm
Direct link to the pdf is here:
http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1191

The document is nearly 250 pages long, so I haven't read it but skimming through it I got the general idea. Coming years will bring these technologies to the fire service:
-- multi-purpose sensors in PPE and the environment,
-- big data,
-- machine learning,
-- robotics.

It'll also be a transition from tradition-based tactics to data-driven science-based tactics.

We live in a truly interesting times.

 

[nfd2004]

I know that I won't be around for it, but maybe the days of being a firefighter might join the days of the Mom/Pop corner grocery store or the milk man delivering our milk.

Many of us that have been around would never think that we could put a plastic card into a machine and our money could come out counted in just the right amount. Before that, the only way was to write a check and cash it.

  About once a month, we would sit down and write out checks to pay all our bills. Put them all in a separate envelope, put a stamp on it and mail them. Now those bills get paid with the click of a thing called a mouse. And not the kind that eats cheese. Sometimes we don't even have to do that. An automatic payment is set up.

  Through science and high tech, the crime of arson is much tougher to get away with today. Smoke detectors do save lives. When I think of all the changes that have come about for the fire service over the last 50 years or so, I wonder what the next 50 will bring.

  I'm not a gambling man, but I bet I won't be around to see it. So with that, I guess it will be up to somebody else to tell how it was 50 years ago from now. That year will then be "2066". How in "2016" firefighters made dramatic rescues without data information being transmitted from their bunker gear. How they had to force entry through doors to make a search and move in with an effective line despite all that heat and smoke.

 

[raybrag]

Maybe even how real, actual HUMANS used to enter burning buildings to rescue trapped people and extinguish fires.  Robotic technology is advancing quickly, and it may not be terribly far in the future when someone comes up with a machine that can do all of the functions we normally think of as a firefighter's jobs.  Just look at the robots that Bomb Squads use . . . and think of their capabilities as those of a Model T as compared to today's cars and trucks.

 

[Lucas]

I'd like to see technology augmenting human capabilities and robots assisting humans instead of replacing them. However, in the end, humans probably will be replaced by robots in just every job. Even today it's possible to automate many human jobs by dividing them into simpler tasks and using appropriate software and hardware. Car driving seemed to be a "human thing" too complicated for machines, right? Currently humans are winning because they're cheaper and there is lack of regulations (for example driverless cars still aren't accepted on all roads and no one knows who should be prosecuted in case of an accident). In a decade or two, however, telemarketers, cashiers, paralegals, budget analysts, office clerks, drivers and many more could be gone. Millions of people will be unemployed...