Barbara Selby
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                                                                            
April 18, 1991
(Phone:  703/557-5609)

Diane Stanley
Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Calif.
(Phone:  415/604-3934)


RELEASE:  91-56

NASA, INDUSTRY TO DEVELOP REMOTE SENSING FIREFIGHTING AID


   NASA's Ames Research Center and Terra-Mar Resource 
Information Services, Inc., both of Mountain View, Calif., will 
jointly develop a system to allow firefighters to merge elevation 
and vegetation data with live pictures of forest fires to enable 
the firefighters to quickly "see" through a smoky forest fire and 
plan their strategy.

   The data will be available to firefighters in a matter of 
minutes, compared with current systems which take 6 to 12 hours 
to obtain similar data.  The disaster assessment system also 
could be used during floods, earthquakes, oil spills and similar 
events. 

   The system will be used to retrieve maps containing 
information about location, land cover, roads and water sources 
from distant sites and to merge this data with up-to-the-minute 
aerial images of the fire area.  The digital image of the fire 
will be transmitted from an airplane flying over the fire to a 
mobile ground station near the fire lines. 

   The system will give firefighters a picture of the fire 
intensity and borders, overlaid with drawings of roads, water 
sources and map coordinates.  If needed, elevation data will be 
displayed in images that appear three dimensional to model the 
fire's spread. 

   The 3-year project calls for NASA to expand existing remote 
sensing technology and for Terra-Mar to develop portable computer 
work stations and advanced software for the system.

   The $600,000 project is funded by NASA's Office of Commercial 
Programs, Washington, D.C., under the Earth Observations 
Commercialization Applications Program (EOCAP), based on a 
proposal submitted by Ames and Terra-Mar.  

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   The ultimate goal of the effort is to develop, test and 
market a commercial remote sensing system for real-time 
assessment and management of natural disasters.  EOCAP promotes 
partnerships between government, industry, educational 
institutions and non-profit organizations to increase commercial 
applications of NASA-developed remote sensing technology. 

   The agreement also funds development of data bases on 
California's vegetation, roads and water sources by the State of 
California's Teale Data Center.  The U.S. Forest Service Forest 
Fire Laboratory will coordinate system testing and use during 
actual fires.  Hewlett-Packard, Ft. Collins, Colo.; VITec, Inc., 
Plano, Texas; and ESL, Sunnyvale, Calif., a subsidiary of TRW, 
will provide hardware and software support to the project. 

                             -end-