Autonomous aircraft for wildfire response
Rain adapts autonomous aircraft with the intelligence to perceive, understand, and suppress wildfires.
Our technology equips fire agencies with a new layer of safety for human-piloted missions, and enables efficient command of a network of uncrewed aircraft prepositioned in remote areas to reduce response time.
This simulation combines fire propagation and fire suppression modeling to determine how many aircraft are required to contain or slow an ignition before it reaches its inflection point.
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Fire is detected early
Regional early wildfire detection sensors, including fire watch cameras, smoke sensors, lightning detectors, and satellites, identify the general coordinates of a suspected wildfire ignition. With over 1,100 early fire watch cameras in California and more across the American West, many regions recognize the growing threat of wildfire and have already invested in early detection.
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Rain-enabled aircraft respond
A nearby Rain-equipped autonomous helicopter launches and flies to the coordinates relayed by the early detection sensors. As the first autonomous aircraft approaches a suspected ignition, Rain technology perceives the fire, understands its behavior, size, direction of spread, then uses that information to design a suppression strategy.
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Fire is contained
Software on Rain aircraft use thermal cameras and computer vision to precisely deploy fire retardant, while Rain’s wildfire intelligence system builds a strategy that considers subsequent responding aircraft, incorporating their resources and arrival times into an optimal suppression strategy. Ground crews ensure complete fire suppression.
Built with Fire Professionals
Our team, which includes former Incident Commanders, EMTs, and Search & Rescue members, has worked alongside fire professionals since day one to build a system that works every time. We have personal experience with catastrophic wildfire and are solving our own problem.
What leaders are saying
Independent research has found that a 15-minute reduction in wildfire response times could generate between $3.5 to $8.2 billion in economic benefits annually for the state of California.
Reducing response time will become more important as the frequency and severity of wildfires continue to rise. In the future, autonomous wildfire suppression technology can support fire agency objectives to reduce response time by significantly increasing the number of prepositioned aircraft in remote or high wildfire risk areas.
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Chief Brian Fennessy
“Reducing wildfire response time has always been our primary goal. With three aircraft staffed 24/7/365, our Quick Reaction Force program in the greater Los Angeles area has already saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by responding to ignitions quickly. Rain’s autonomous wildfire suppression technology will give every community the opportunity to stop wildfires before they grow out of control.”
—Chief Fennessy is the Orange County Fire Chief, Chair of FIRESCOPE and was recently named International Fire Chief of the Year
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Chief Kate Dargan Marquis
“The paradox of wildfire today is that we need much more low intensity, healthy fire and less high intensity, damaging fire. Rain succeeds for both of these goals by making it easier to control damaging fires in new ways, and also by helping us advance low intensity fire when and where we need it. Rain has a unique vision and role in our fire future.”
—Chief Kate Dargan Marquis is the former California State Fire Marshal & former White House Assistant Director of Disaster Preparedness and Response. She currently serves as a senior advisor to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Wildfire Resilience Initiative.
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Chief Dan Munsey
“It is clear that autonomous uncrewed aircraft are critical to the future of wildland firefighting response. Keeping fires small using water dropping drones and using drones to map fire perimeters are two examples of how uncrewed aerial systems allow our firefighters to respond and safely control fires before they can grow uncontrollable. Rain is at the forefront of this exciting wildland firefighting evolution.”
—Chief Munsey is the Chairperson, International Association of Fire Chiefs Technology Council
Updates
