B.C. wildfire tech firms aiding in the fire fight at home and abroad

Robert Atwood, CEO of Nova, says he was inspired to start the company while working as an initial attack firefighter with the B.C. Wildfire Service. (Nova)

With B.C. communities increasingly under threat from destructive wildfires, new tools to identify and map hotspots can help firefighters douse flames before they flare into infernos.

“Our focus from the beginning has been on how can we deliver better information and data to the firefighters themselves,” said Robert Atwood, CEO of Nova, a company that combines data from drones, planes, helicopters and satellites to relay data to firefighters in real time.

Back in 2014, Atwood was an initial attack firefighter with the B.C. Wildfire Service.

He says that experience on the front lines served as inspiration to start a company.

“I got really excited about drone technology and the way that we thought that could impact firefighting moving forward,” he said. “We started a company in the back seat of our pump truck. And now, 12 years later, it’s been our entire professional lives.”

Nova works with BCWS, and internationally from Australia to California, where it helped map last year’s destructive Palisades Fire.

In an interview, BCWS research and innovation officer Justin Nicholas told CTV News emerging technologies can give crews an early edge.

“Let’s say before crews roll out to the line, they may be in a position where they’ve got hotspot data that rolled in overnight, sent directly to their phones,” Nicholas said.

NorthX Climate Tech is a Vancouver-based non-profit that has been investing in local companies, including Nova and Squamish’s Fire Swarm, which is designing heavy-lift drones that can drop large buckets full of water on fires.

“We need to give our front-line heroes a really different set of tools, a more powerful set of tools, because the nature of fire itself has changed,” said Sarah Goodman, NorthX’s president and CEO.

“And that calls for a modernization in the tools that they have available.”

That’s what motivates Atwood, who has been one of those front-line heroes.

“Ultimately, seeing the adoption that we’ve experienced in our market, once you find that thing, it’s kind of undeniable in terms of the value,” he said.

As the season heats up this year, the firefighters British Columbians rely on increasingly rely on innovation to help gain the upper hand in the fire fight.