Wildfire Instrumentation
The RAPID Facility has deployed instrumentation and staff to wildfires across the United States. For example, the RAPID collaborated with Oregon State University Assistant Professor Erica Fischer’s research team to assess the post-fire performance of engineered buildings and investigate the performance of pre-fire mitigation for the 2018 Camp Wildfire in Paradise, CA. The team used terrestrial laser scanners to capture structural elements and burn characteristics for finite element modeling, collected 360° streetview data for debris disposal and recovery monitoring, and flew UAS to capture orthomosaics of wildfire mitigation efforts.
RAPID deployed with University of Oregon Professor Josh Roering’s GEER team to the Holiday Farm, Archie Creek, and Eagle Creek fires in Central Oregon. The team used the Maptek XR3 long-range terrestrial laser scanner to capture digital terrain of landslide risk hillslopes and RTK-enabled UAS to generate 3D models and orthomosaics to characterize and quantify post-fire debris flow potential in catchments.
The Marshall Fire in Superior, Colorado, destroyed over 20,000 homes and raised questions about structural burn severity in the wildland urban interface. A reconnaissance team led by Erica Fischer (OSU), Brad Wham and Shideh Dashti (UCBoulder) collaborated with the RAPID to collect approximately 6 sq miles (3780 acres) of high-resolution imagery with RAPID’s fixed-wing UAS and ultra-high precision terrestrial lidar scans of burned structures to measure structural components where site access was not possible.
