The initial use of ARTEMIS was focused on Search and Rescue operations. When it came to aerial firefighting, we saw its potential and decided to engage with the firefighting community. We began attending conferences, actively seeking out fire fighters, and listening to their needs and challenges, which allowed us to understand how ARTEMIS could address their specific priorities.
Detect
We spoke to Smoke jumpers, who mentioned that one of their tasks after dropping into a region was check buildings and shelters to see if any people were still in the danger area. Artemis could aid in this task from the air, providing a high degree of confidence that no civilians are in danger within a wildfire zone, It would also be useful to detect any people in an area where retardant was going to be dropped.
Locate
Having detected the presence of phones in the area Artemis will calculate the location (Lat,Long) of hundreds of phones simultaneously and display on the embedded mapping or any mission system mapping. In addition, if the aircraft was equipped with EO/IR, the derived location of any of the hundreds of phones could cue the camera to look at that specific location.
Communicate
Artemis can offer an alternative communications channel, particularly in situations where the local cellular network has been compromised. It can be point-to-point communications, either voice calls or texts, or even a broadcast text to everyone in the area, warning of changing conditions or asking id anyone needs medical assistance.
Real-time updates from air attack aircraft to ground teams enhance coordination, which is especially critical in fast-moving wildfire situations. Additionally, the fact that ARTEMIS is fully integrated into CivTAK, ATAK and iTAK, means for better all-round situational awareness.
An early adopter for firefighting was the Italian Vigili del Fuoco (VVF), the national fire and rescue service, which integrated Artemis into their Leonardo AW139 aircraft. The VVF also deployed a backpack ground-based version, ARTEMIS-Flex, with their rescue teams to enhance coordination and communication during operations.
