The Center of Excellence for Advance Technology Aerial Firefighting was awarded Popular Science’s 2020 Best of What’s New Award in the security category.

CoE won the award after its work on the Team Awareness Kit, a geospatial mapping engine that allows situation awareness, navigation and data sharing on the Android operating system.

“We are grateful to the U.S. Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management for their support implementing this program,” said Brad Schmidt, CoE wildland fire projects manager. 

“This system was originally developed by the military for use by special forces, and now enables first responders to reliably transmit location information, collaboratively map an incident, and access other tools that improve the safety and efficiency of their operations, even if traditional internet connections are degraded or absent.”

Coloradan firefighters first started using TAK to combat flames in 2018, but this year, the TAK Product Center made a version of the app available to first responders to easily have access to the technology free of charge.

In one of the worst fire season on record in Colorado, 28 fire crews that assisted in the Grizzly Creek fire for nearly two weeks deployed the app.

It allowed the firefighters to view locations of others in real time and provided updated map information, fire perimeters and infrared video clips of the fire, according to the release.