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Wildfire detection and responseWildfire, seen in its first minutes.
A wildfire is cheapest to fight in its first minutes. Cameras on towers, fire weather stations, thermal sensors and satellite hotspots report to one record the fire agency trusts, so a start is confirmed, located and dispatched while it is still small.
Plan a deploymentHow it worksStation Builder- Industry
- Public safety
- Measurements
- 5
- Sources cited
- 5
Public safety · Wildfire detection and response
The first minutes decide
A fire that starts on a hot, windy afternoon can be a few square metres when it is first seen or a front by the time someone calls it in. Towers that see the landscape, weather that rates the danger and a confirmed location sent to dispatch turn minutes into the margin crews need.
What is measured
Smoke, heat, weather and hotspots
Pan-tilt cameras on towers scan for smoke across overlapping views. Thermal cameras confirm heat at high-risk interfaces, weather stations measure wind, temperature, humidity and rain for fire danger, and satellites add hotspots and burned area on each pass. Every source carries its time and position.
- Instruments
- Tower cameras · Thermal cameras · Fire weather stations · Satellite hotspots
The base node
Detection at the top of the tower
The tower’s edge node runs smoke detection on the camera feed, checks it against the thermal camera and the wind, computes a bearing and signs the detection with its images. Only detections and stills travel the link, so the network carries what matters even in smoke.
Radio and links
Tower to tower, and by satellite
Towers on high points carry video and detections over microwave to the dispatch centre. Remote towers, and any whose microwave path fails in smoke, send detections and stills through a satellite terminal; towers near towns use cellular as a second path.
- Links
- Microwave · Satellite · Public cellular
How it works
From a wisp of smoke to dispatch
A camera sees smoke; the node confirms it and sends the detection with its bearing. A second tower’s bearing crosses it, the operator confirms the location, and the fire agency receives the alert with images and fire weather. Crews are dispatched while the start is small.
From order to operation · Order
Scope the landscape and the agency
The scope reads the fire history, fuel and terrain, existing lookouts and cameras, and the agency’s dispatch and warning procedures. Nexus Observatory Inc. returns the tower plan with viewsheds, the radio design, the integration with dispatch and a price per tower and per service.
Plan a deploymentFrom order to operation · Survey
Prove each view from the top
Crews compute viewsheds from candidate peaks and existing towers, then climb to photograph what each camera would see. They check microwave paths between towers, sky view for satellite, access by road and air, and record the fuel around each site.
From order to operation · Permits
Peaks, aviation and the agency
Towers on public land need the land manager’s consent, and tall structures follow aviation rules. The role of detections is agreed in writing with the fire agency, so the agency decides on dispatch and warnings. Every consent is kept with its tower.
From order to operation · Build
Build for the fire season
Cameras, thermal sensors, weather stations, nodes and radios are built, tested together and enrolled with their identities. Each tower is configured with its views, detection zones and masks for known false alarms, and every part is labelled for replacement at height.
Open the Station BuilderFrom order to operation · Install
Install before the season
Climbing crews mount cameras, thermal sensors and dishes, and the weather station is sited clear of the tower. Solar arrays and batteries are fitted, the area is cleared of fuel, and every tower is photographed and located for the record before the fire season begins.
From order to operation · Commission
Test detection end to end
Each node proves its identity. Views are checked against the viewshed, detection is tested with a controlled smoke source where allowed, weather is compared with a reference and links are aligned. A test detection travels to dispatch and back. The tower goes live only when every check passes.
From order to operation · Operate
Confirm, locate, dispatch
Operators see detections with images, bearings and fire weather, confirm them from a second tower and pass a located start to the fire agency. Fire danger is published daily, crews see wind changes, and every detection and decision is kept on the record.
From order to operation · Maintain
Climb before every season
Before each season, crews climb every tower to clean lenses, check mounts and batteries and recheck views. Weather sensors are checked against a reference, false-alarm masks reviewed with the agency, and every change recorded, so detection performance can be compared year to year.
Book field servicesData products
For dispatchers, commanders and managers
Fire dispatch centres receive confirmed detections with location and images; incident commanders receive live views; fire agencies, land managers and utilities receive fire weather and danger; agencies and auditors receive detection records and reviews. Each product carries its source and timing.
See the data productsEvidence
A season you can review
Every detection, confirmation, dispatch and false alarm is signed and kept with its time and place. Practice follows FAO fire management guidelines and the multi-hazard early warning checklist, alerts travel in the Common Alerting Protocol, and satellite products come from the emergency management service.
- Drawn against
- FAO fire management guidelines · WMO early warning checklist · Common Alerting Protocol · Copernicus EMS
What you get
Wildfire camera and fire-weather networks
Camera towers with edge inference and co-located fire-weather stations; detections go to the agency that decides and dispatches. Delivered as hardware + software and managed service, for forestry and emergency agencies, utilities. Scale: Regional networks across fire seasons. Service levels are written as numbers you can measure on your own dashboard.
Talk to salesNext step
Plan wildfire detection and response with us
Tell us the site, the measurements and the rules it answers to. We reply with a survey proposal, a design and a scope for wildfire detection and response. An engineer replies with a survey proposal and a scope, and the plan grows from one site to the network you need, at your pace.
Plan a deploymentOpen the Station BuilderOpen the Studio
01The place and its hazards
Where it runs, and what can go wrong.
Operating contextFire agencies, land managers and utilities watch landscapes where a start on a hot, dry, windy day can become a disaster within hours. Detection comes from lookouts, the public, cameras and satellites; fire danger comes from weather and fuel. Dispatch decisions belong to the fire agency, and warnings to the public follow its procedures.
Hazards
- Starts in remote terrain seen too late
- Rapid spread on hot, dry, windy days
- Smoke and loss of power cutting detection and links
- False alarms that tie up crews
- Crews and residents caught by a change in wind
02What must be measured
What, where, how often, and under which rules.
Each measurement names where it is taken, how often, and the public standard or regulation behind it. Numbers in the sources column open the cited source below.
| Measurement | Where | Cadence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smoke and flame | Cameras on towers and high points with overlapping views | Continuous through the fire season | 1 |
| Fire weather | Stations in representative fuel types and terrain | Continuous, hourly danger in the season | 21 |
| Thermal confirmation | Thermal cameras at high-risk interfaces | Continuous | 1 |
| Hotspots and burned area | The whole region, from satellites | Each available pass | 3 |
| Fire danger rating | Each danger area, from weather and fuel | Daily and on change | 4 |
03The observation stack
From one base unit to a network.
The same blocks at every scale: instruments and a base node, a site with its radio, a fleet run as one, and a network federated on the open protocol.
- 01
Base unit
A tower: a pan-tilt camera, a thermal camera and a weather station read by an edge node that detects smoke and signs each detection.
Build a station → - 02
Site
A watch area: overlapping towers for cross bearings, microwave between them and a satellite path for the remote ones.
Plan a site → - 03
Fleet
Every tower of a region run as one fleet, with one detection review and one record.
Managed offers → - 04
Network
Fire agencies, land managers and utilities exchange detections and fire danger through open standards.
The open protocol →
- 01PTZ camera
- 02Thermal camera
- 03Compact weather station
- 04Edge node (Wedge)
- 05Point-to-point microwave
- 06LEO flat-panel terminal
- 07Solar array
- 08Lattice tower
Radio and links
Point-to-point microwave
Towers on high points carry video and detections tower to tower to the dispatch centre.
Radio and links
Satellite
Remote towers and those whose microwave path fails in smoke send detections and stills by satellite.
Radio and links
Public cellular
Towers near towns use cellular as a cheaper second path.
Edge computeThe tower node runs smoke detection on the camera feed, confirms with the thermal camera and weather, computes a bearing and sends the detection with images; an operator confirms before dispatch.
PowerTowers run on solar with batteries sized for long smoke-dimmed days; nothing depends on the local grid that a fire may cut.
04How it works
From the instrument to the product.
One observation’s path, tier by tier, with the interface on every link and a bill of materials below; then how the one node grows to a site, a fleet and federated networks.
Wildfire detection and response: data path
– of 06
01 Instruments Measurement with sensor identity andcalibration 02 Node – Wrap in an observation envelope with timequality– Measure quality and uncertainty, attachquality flags– Buffer locally (store-and-forward when thelink drops) 03 Backhaul Commit with transactional outbox andpublish, delivered at least once 04 Site Consumer inbox deduplicates and applieseach record once into governed data 05 Data store Governed product through API, map orexport, correction-aware 06 Products Common Alerting ProtocolOGC SensorThings APIWMO WIS 2.0 07 Power and structure Supplies 12 V DC, 24 V DC, 48 V DC to thefield equipment 01 PTZ camera Ethernet 02 Thermal camera Ethernet 03 Compact weather station SDI-12 · RS-485 · Ethernet 04 Edge node (Wedge) Ethernet · Fibre · USB · RS-485 ·BMC 05 Point-to-point microwave Ethernet · Fibre 06 LEO flat-panel terminal Ethernet Site MQTT 5 with Sparkplug B Governed data store Versioned, correction-aware Confirmed detections with locationand images Fire weather and danger Live views for incident commanders Detection records and reviews 07 Solar array RS-485 08 Lattice tower Ethernet Ethernet · RTSP/ONVIF RS-485 Ethernet Ethernet Microwave link Satellite IP| Item | Equipment | Data ports | Protocols | Power in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | PTZ cameraPan-tilt-zoom camera for wide-area visual monitoring (wildfire, flood, traffic). | Ethernet | RTSP with ONVIF profiles | PoE, 24 V DC |
| 02 | Thermal cameraLong-wave infrared camera for fire detection, equipment hot spots and night monitoring. | Ethernet | RTSP with ONVIF profiles, MQTT 5 | PoE |
| 03 | Compact weather stationAll-in-one or compact station for temperature, humidity, pressure, wind and rain at a site. | SDI-12RS-485Ethernet | SDI-12, Modbus, MQTT 5, OGC SensorThings API | 12 V DC |
| 04 | Edge node (Wedge)Rugged edge node that boots from signed media, attests itself and establishes a site cell from little or no infrastructure. | EthernetFibreUSBRS-485BMC | MQTT 5, DMTF Redfish, IEEE 1588 PTP, NTP with NTS, OPC UA | 12 V DC, 24 V DC, 48 V DC, AC mains |
| 05 | Point-to-point microwaveLicensed or licence-exempt point-to-point radio link between two sites with line-of-sight. | EthernetFibre | IEEE 1588 PTP | PoE, 48 V DC |
| 06 | LEO flat-panel terminalElectronically steered flat-panel user terminal for low-Earth-orbit broadband constellations. | Ethernet | — | PoE, 48 V DC, AC mains |
| 07 | Solar arrayPV modules with charge controller sized to the site’s load and climate. | RS-485 | Modbus | — |
| 08 | Lattice towerSelf-supporting or guyed lattice tower for macro radios, links and instruments. | — | — | — |
How it scales
01 Instruments Arbitrary qualified sensors and instruments whosemeasurements are ingested with calibration, units,geometry, time, custody and uncertainty. ×n 02 Node The minimum useful deployable unit: server, ruggedappliance, radio node, sensor gateway, satelliteterminal, AI, scientific, vehicle or virtual node. Node Node agent 03 Site The minimum independently operable localgovernance and failure domain: one or more nodesplus local network, identity, policy, evidence,storage, products and operator surfaces.SITE
Node Node Node ×n 04 Cluster An optional scale or specialisation domain forscheduling, shared storage, accelerators or datalocality.CLUSTER
×n 05 Fleet Coordinates plans, acknowledgements,convergence evidence, update campaigns andcorrection propagation across nodes and sites.FLEET
Fleet controller ×n 06 Federation An exchange of products, capabilities, events orwork across approved, independently administeredtrust domains, using explicit trust, policy,data-locality, version and correction contracts.TRUST DOMAIN
TRUST DOMAIN
TRUST DOMAIN
×n Verifier Applications Data in the field Telemetry Control Data upstream Control Data upstream Control Exchange Evidence Events Exchange- Data in the field
- MQTT 5 with Sparkplug B; connectors for LoRaWAN, OPC UA and instrument buses.
- Telemetry
- OpenTelemetry OTLP.
- Control
- TLS 1.3 with mutual authentication; protobuf messages over gRPC or HTTP/2.
- Data upstream
- At-least-once publication with repeat-safe keys over the control channel or NATS JetStream; QUIC MAY be used on lossy links.
- Evidence
- DSSE-signed in-toto statements; SLSA provenance; SCITT transparency receipts.
- Events
- Event envelopes mapped to CloudEvents 1.0; channels described in AsyncAPI 3.
- Exchange
- OpenAPI 3.1; the OGC API family; SensorThings; STAC; WIS 2.0.
05From order to operation
Every step, from the first call to a running site.
The same crew and the same record carry the work from scope to maintenance.
- 01 Order
Scope the landscape and the agency
The scope reads the fire history, fuel and terrain, existing lookouts and cameras, and the agency’s dispatch and warning procedures. Nexus Observatory Inc. returns the tower plan with viewsheds, the radio design, the integration with dispatch and a price per tower and per service. 1
- 02 Survey
Prove each view from the top
Crews compute viewsheds from candidate peaks and existing towers, then climb to photograph what each camera would see. They check microwave paths between towers, sky view for satellite, access by road and air, and record the fuel around each site.
- 03 Permits
Peaks, aviation and the agency
Towers on public land need the land manager’s consent, and tall structures follow aviation rules. The role of detections is agreed in writing with the fire agency, so the agency decides on dispatch and warnings. Every consent is kept with its tower.
- 04 Build
Build for the fire season
Cameras, thermal sensors, weather stations, nodes and radios are built, tested together and enrolled with their identities. Each tower is configured with its views, detection zones and masks for known false alarms, and every part is labelled for replacement at height.
- 05 Install
Install before the season
Climbing crews mount cameras, thermal sensors and dishes, and the weather station is sited clear of the tower. Solar arrays and batteries are fitted, the area is cleared of fuel, and every tower is photographed and located for the record before the fire season begins.
- 06 Commission
Test detection end to end
Each node proves its identity. Views are checked against the viewshed, detection is tested with a controlled smoke source where allowed, weather is compared with a reference and links are aligned. A test detection travels to dispatch and back. The tower goes live only when every check passes. 5
- 07 Operate
Confirm, locate, dispatch
Operators see detections with images, bearings and fire weather, confirm them from a second tower and pass a located start to the fire agency. Fire danger is published daily, crews see wind changes, and every detection and decision is kept on the record. 43
- 08 Maintain
Climb before every season
Before each season, crews climb every tower to clean lenses, check mounts and batteries and recheck views. Weather sensors are checked against a reference, false-alarm masks reviewed with the agency, and every change recorded, so detection performance can be compared year to year.
06Data products and integration
What it delivers, to whom, and into which systems.
Data products
- Confirmed detections with location and imagesFire dispatch centres
- Fire weather and dangerFire agencies, land managers and utilities
- Live views for incident commandersIncident commanders
- Detection records and reviewsAgencies and auditors
Integration
- DispatchConfirmed detections are sent in the Common Alerting Protocol or the agency’s own format.
- Fire danger systemsWeather is delivered to the agency’s danger rating system through OGC SensorThings.
- Satellite hotspotsDetections are compared with satellite hotspots and mapping from emergency services.
Exchanged through Common Alerting Protocol, OGC SensorThings API, WMO WIS 2.0.
07Questions buyers ask
Before you scope it.
Who decides to dispatch?
The fire agency. The network detects and confirms; the agency dispatches and warns.
How are false alarms kept down?
Masks for known sources, thermal confirmation and an operator’s review before dispatch.
What if smoke cuts the link?
A satellite path carries detections when microwave fails.
Can utilities use the same towers?
Yes, by agreement; utilities often share towers and fire weather.
08Resources
The sources behind this page.
Public standards, regulations and guidance, cited where they apply. Each applies only where its jurisdiction or scope does.
- 1Fire management: voluntary guidelinesFood and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations · 2006
- 2Guide to Instruments and Methods of Observation (WMO-No. 8)World Meteorological Organization
- 3Copernicus Emergency Management ServiceEuropean Commission
- 4Multi-hazard Early Warning Systems: A ChecklistWorld Meteorological Organization · 2018
- 5Common Alerting Protocol Version 1.2OASIS
09Related
Use cases and solutions.
Use caseWildfire camera and fire-weather node
Pan-tilt and thermal cameras with edge inference on a ridgeline tower, co-located with a fire-weather station.The full use case →SolutionWildfire camera and fire-weather networks
Camera towers with edge inference and co-located fire-weather stations; detections go to the agency that decides and dispatches.Solutions for public safety →SolutionSatellite and non-terrestrial backhaul
LEO and GEO backhaul, 3GPP non-terrestrial integration and direct-to-device fallbacks for remote sites.Solutions for public safety →10Public safety: specialized fields
Other fields of this industry.
Specialized fieldFlash and urban floods
Rain and water depth in streets, culverts and small streams, with cameras at known flood points, on LoRaWAN and cellular, so warnings reach people in the minutes a flash flood allows.The full field →Specialized fieldLandslides and debris flows
Ground movement by GNSS, pore pressure and rainfall thresholds, ground vibration for debris flows, on LoRaWAN and satellite from unstable slopes to the agency that warns and closes roads.The full field →Specialized fieldEarthquakes and early warning
Strong-motion and broadband seismometers, GNSS for large events, structural response in key buildings, on fibre and cellular with timing that lets a warning outrun the shaking.The full field →Specialized fieldAvalanches and mountain roads
Snow and weather on the slopes, avalanche detection by radar and infrasound, cameras on the paths, on microwave and satellite to the road and the avalanche service, so roads close before the snow comes down.The full field →Specialized fieldIncident response and deployable networks
A network that arrives with the crews: cell on wheels, satellite, mesh, drones, gas and thermal sensing at the scene, so incident command sees and talks when local networks are down.The full field →Bring us the site.
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