Avwatch leads the way in providing real-time situation awareness

PRESCOTT, Ariz. - Sept. 22, 2014 - PRLog -- Avwatch (www.avwatch.us), a Plymouth, MA business delivering aerial reconnaissance, real time motion video and tactical networking services to government and commercial clients, recently demonstrated breakthrough technology at a wildfire simulation in Prescott, Arizona, near the scene of the Yarnell Hill Fire that took the lives of 19 Prescott firefighters last year.

Avwatch founder and President Chris Kluckhuhn and his team provided the demonstration in conjunction with the Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Prescott Fire Department.  To support the networking requirements of DARPA’s Fire Line Advanced Situational Awareness for Handhelds (FLASH) application, Avwatch built a high speed tactical network across a 100 square mile area which included mountains, canyons, and heavily forested areas.

This solution allowed firefighters in the field, as well as those in command centers, to see real time positions of all responders, see real time surface and aerial imagery, and collaborate through voice, text, and real time file exchanges within their own secure network.

In addition to the tactical network set up in the local Prescott, AZ area, Avwatch provided a remote tactical network connection 2,000 miles away to DARPA's offices in Arlington, Virginia, which provided observers there with the same real time situational awareness capabilities firefighters in the field possessed.

Avwatch has pioneered the use of the Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET), to support the requirement for real time situational awareness information in the chaotic, highly dynamic conditions typical of disaster response operations.  Avwatch’s MANET solution has been successfully used by Cal Fire for the past 5 years to support their wildfire situational awareness requirements in Southern California.

Avwatch also assisted British Petroleum (BP) during its response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill by creating and supporting a 10,000 sq mile MANET for four months to provide real time imagery and communication between command centers, surface response vessels, and spotter aircraft.  In the years since then, Avwatch has supported multiple smaller oil spills, wild fires, floods, and hurricane responses.

Kluckhuhn, a veteran of the United States Coast Guard and graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Defense and Homeland Security (www.chds.us) combined his operational experience as a first responder at significant national disasters which included 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina with what he learned at the Center for Defense and Homeland Security (CHDS)  to address the lack of real time situational awareness he witnessed, not only at those events but at every other major response he was involved in.  He launched Avwatch in 2008 in order to field the radical leap in capabilities MANET technologies provide responders operating at the tactical edge under difficult circumstances.

The Prescott demonstration featured one of Avwatch’s surrogate Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as well as several portable systems which were dropped on mountain peaks to rapidly establish the tactical network with or without aircraft support.  This infrastructure allowed DARPA to fully demonstrate the benefits of the FLASH application in assessing terrain, sharing real time updates about positions, fire lines, and imagery.

The Avwatch team spent an additional week after the demonstration, to train 60 of Prescott’s firefighters; and, at their request, Avwatch conducted an additional field demonstration that integrated E 911 to send an approximate position of a simulated injured hiker to first responders who then coordinated their response using the FLASH application.  “We were pained to see the tragedy that befell Prescott’s Granite Mountain Hotshot Team last year, and treat this opportunity to share new technology as a sacred obligation,” said Kluckhuhn, who added, “This technology could revolutionize how we respond to natural disasters and emergencies and ultimately be the way everyone operates in the future.”

About Avwatch

Avwatch is a Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), which harnesses innovative and proven technologies to support, enhance, and train Federal, state and local government agencies in support of homeland security and disaster recovery. The company’s unique airborne platform permits homeland security professionals the freedom to interact directly with aircraft, generate requested flight routes, specify data to be collected and precisely control the onboard camera sensors. Communications between the ground user and aircraft are internet-provided, allowing the user and aircraft to communicate in real time.  This facilitates immediate aircraft tasking and retrieval of data and imagery updates from anywhere in the world, at anytime.

Avwatch provides homeland security professionals with a low-cost solution capable of conducting routine patrols efficiently and effectively. The company was founded in 2008 by Chris Kluckhuhn, a former Coast Guard rescue pilot with two Homeland Security masters degrees. Kluckhuhn’s successes in improving operational processes and technologies have been nationally recognized by Government Computer News (http://gcn.com/articles/2007/05/04/chris-kluckhuhn--calcu...) for visionary leadership and by the Coast Guard as a leader in innovation.
TheAvwatch team consists of nationally recognized Homeland Security experts who are well-versed in military, federal, state and local disaster response planning and response protocols. Avwatch technology has been used to assist in oil cleanup following the 2010 explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, where they provided high-quality streaming video to the US Coast Guard, BP and authorities to assist with oil spill cleanup. The company also provides training for US Air Force Pilots prior to overseas deployment, and has been instrumental in rescue during extreme weather conditions, including hurricanes. In addition to firefighting, the technology is also used by the California Highway Patrol. Avwatch maintains headquarters at 246 South Meadow Road, Plymouth, MA and serves a national client base. For additional information, please visit www.avwatch.us or call 774-247-0001.