FB Eye

Objectives of the service

The FB Eye project results from the need of aerial firefighting operators to manage real-time coordination of flight operations, information and to streamline operational response.

The objective is to address the waterbombing accuracy problem, the most effective weapon against forest fires, since nowadays the water release point is qualitatively eye-assessed by the pilots. This solution enables the waterbomber operators to have a better fire theatre situational awareness and to improve the waterbombing accuracy, which are key features to reduce operations time and costs and to increase response effectiveness and safety.

The following tasks are covered in this project:

Indicating the optimal water release coordinates, in space and time, in order to reduce the propensity of the fire to spread;
Enhancing the geographic multi-temporal Situational Awareness of the fire scenario;
Realtime assessing the actual waterbombing effectiveness;
Assure the compliance of the system with the operational constraints.

This contributes to:

Reduce the duration of fire extinguishing time;
Reduce the incidence and extent of forest fires, which are already among the first contributors to climate change;
Optimize the response efficiency and costs;
Enhance the coordination of the airborne teams involved in the response operations.

Users and their needs

Since the project involves as partner Air Tractor Europe company, which is the unique seller of the AT802 waterbombing aircraft, the target is all the many EU operators which employ the same aircraft.

By retrofitting the hundreds of already sold aircrafts and by equipping the new ones, the target user communities are the airborne operators engaged in firefighting operations. Also, the project's open architectural approach enables it to address a secondary customer segment, which includes Public Authorities or private companies using or renting larger/smaller aerial platforms than AT802 (helicopters, Canadair and drones). This feature also makes it suited – with the appropriate modifications and customizations – to general Civil Protection and SAR purposes relating to emergency situations and natural disasters.

Mainly, the user communities have needs to:

maximize the efficiency of waterbombing
assess the success of the bombing
limit damages from fires
hit the best possible fire spot in order to decrease the progression velocity of fire-front, accounting for the evolution of the fire in a predictive way
increase the geographic multi-temporal Situational Awareness of the fire scenario
have a system certified to perform critical flight operations

The solution identified to meet the user's needs is to provide the pilot with the precise coordinates of water release which reduces the spread of fire and overcomes another key problem of poor visibility created by smoke propagation.

The main challenge is given by the real-time integration of onboard acquired data with the control room computing through two-way satellite communications.

Another innovative feature is to provide onboard and non-onboard actors with continuously updated information integrated in a cloud-based, real-time geographic Decision Support System.

Service/ system concept

The end-to-end, standalone service is able to provide:

the coordinates of the water release within the aircraft cockpit indicating to the pilot the most effective coordinates in space and time, accounting for hot-spot energy, observed-and-forecasted (expected) fractional progress of the fire-front, local vegetal fuel and avoidance areas;
the aircraft operators with the geographic multi-temporal Situational Awareness (SA) of the fire scenario, including aircraft location and the multi-temporal evidence of bombing efficiency.

This tool makes the waterbombing service provider capable of:

Upgrade company technical competitiveness of the firefighting service with respect to the competitors;
Carry out effective firefighting operations even in poor visibility conditions;
Optimize the response efficiency and costs, reducing the incidence of forest fires.

The system is composed by:

Airborne segment, equipping the waterbomber, which includes belly thermal camera, onboard tablet, IMU/GNSS and satellite modem
Cloud based Ground segment

During the operational scenario, the system acquires thermal images, which are pre-processed onboard and sent to ground segment via satellite. Here the data are elaborated in near real time to extract the most effective possible waterbombing coordinates, which are transmitted to the waterbomber cockpit and displayed on the table, alerting the pilot when and where to drop.

Space Added Value

The FB Eye system uses the following space-based assets for telecommunications and positioning.

Satellite Telecommunications

The telecommunications between the Ground segment and the Airborne Toolkit are based on a commercial Satellite terminal, realized as an integrated single assembly package that is optimized for airborne data transmission. The satellite communications link is the solution best fitting the project goal, as forest fires are often located in areas poorly covered by terrestrial communications with acceptable bandwidth.

The terminal data rate features and the satellite service GEO constellation allow the system to transmit and receive the required items within the operational timing constraints ensuring excellent coverage over Europe.

Positioning and Navigation

The location of airborne segment, should be known with best accuracy, allowing thermal imagery from the onboard FLIR camera to be correctly georeferenced. GNSS services in absolute positioning are crucial for integrated firefighting C2, aimed at fitting the most probable, and worst operation context. The FB Eye multi-GNSS (GPS, GALILEO, GLONASS, SBAS) guarantee excellent performances in terms of:

accuracy (position: 2.5m CEP; SBAS: 2.0m CEP), which don’t significantly affect the effectiveness of waterbombing
Navigation Update rate (up to 10 Hz), which assures a position update every 10m

Current Status

The AT-802 aircraft, equipped with FB Eye, has undergone airworthiness certification procedures being qualified for operation in a real operational environment. It is important to highlight that the aforementioned certification is applicable to all aircrafts belonging to the AT-802 type.

The aircraft selected for the demonstration stage was at Air Tractor facilities during the winter season to carry out its annual routine maintenance. Within this window, the aircraft was at the disposal of the project to install the FB Eye system and carry out flight tests, also, the users have been trained in the use of the system, especially for the planned flight test over the airport.

After the installation, certification procedures have been finalised and pre-demo tests carried out by setting up the Air Tractor Europe’s runway with huge burning bins and extinguishing them performing a waterbombing supported by FB Eye.

The pilot stage started with the deployment of the aircraft, equipped with FB Eye, to Sabadell Airport, where it entered into operational service with the Catalonia Civil Protection Department, upon the authorization by the Catalonia regional government.

During the first demonstration months until just before the start of the fire emergency season, training in the use of the system was carried out, both remotely and in person at the site.

The preparation phase was concluded with a flight demonstration of the system during a training operation over the Boadella lake (Catalonia, Spain). The pilot practised with the system in an operational environment, performing the same tasks as a firefighting mission at operational altitudes:

Mission initialization
Approach to the mission area
Overflight of the mission area
Waterbombing simulation
Water refill

The operational phase of the pilot stage started with the execution of a real firefighting mission.
On August 2nd a firefighting intervention was required at Politg, Catalonia, Spain. This marked the inaugural operational flight of FB Eye.

Following a demonstration campaign involving a total of more than 10 hours of flight time, 6 of which were conducted in operational scenarios on actual fires, the pilot provided invaluable feedback on the performance of the system and the user experience during operations.

The operators expressed great satisfaction with the successful trial, which led to the conclusion that the system is suitable for single-seat aircraft, with minor adjustments to enhance the overall quality and usability of the FB Eye system during operational service.

The analysis of all KPIs demonstrated that they consistently exceeded the expected value throughout the observation period. Therefore, it can be concluded that the system reliably performed in accordance with the predefined metrics for analysis in terms of service availability, system performance, usability during water bombing operations and accuracy.

The outcomes univocally indicate that, as of September 2024, FB Eye is a still unmatched and substantially unique system of quantitative, realtime support to pilot’s operations (virtual co-pilot), as all comparable firefighting support solutions, offered on the market, have sectorial focus on either fire detection and communication, or managing complex theater scenarios only.