TracPlus Labs is exploring how operational aviation data can answer complex questions around wildfire risk, fleet deployment and aerial firefighting.
Beyond its FireFlyte solution, some of the most impactful conversations TracPlus has with agencies and operators tend to start the same way. Someone describes a question about their own operation they have never been able to answer – how stretched were we really last August? Is the fleet sitting where the risk actually is? – and asks whether the data could answer it. TracPlus Labs is the company’s way of saying: let us find out.
TracPlus has spent 15 years fusing aircraft telemetry and suppression data, from satellite and cellular, and more recently ADS-B, into a single operational feed for agencies, including CAL FIRE and the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, with more than 6.5 million flight hours of record. Labs is part of the company that asks what else that record could do and finds out quickly.
How does TracPlus Labs turn operational data into new tools?
James Cox, Head of Product at TracPlus, said: “We have got a lot of smart people and access to a unique set of operational data, and we believe that if you put those two things together you can build things that actually help the wildfire community.
“Labs lets us move quickly on that. We take a problem, we use the data we have already got, what else we might be able to add to it, and we see what is possible, without it having to clear a product roadmap first.”
Two projects have come out of Labs so far: a wildfire risk model scoring conditions and fleet reach across California, and a national directory of water bodies suitable for helicopter and scooper reload, built from US Geological Survey data.
What does the wildfire community actually need from its data?
Todd O’Hara, TracPlus CEO, said: “When we talk to customers, not one of them says they need more data. What they need is insight from the data they already have.”
Cox added: “The projects that have worked best started with someone bringing us a question they had always wanted answered about their own operation, and us finding out whether the data could get there.
“That is what we want more of. If you have one of those questions, come and have the conversation with us.”
About TracPlus
TracPlus provides the operational data layer for aerial firefighting. We capture, structure, and deliver the data that agencies and operators across 40+ countries rely on to understand what their contracted fleets actually did, defend how public money was spent, and make better decisions next season.
