 think tech away civil engagement lives here it is Thursday afternoon folks just afternoon as a matter of fact Ted Rawson here in our studio downtown Honolulu momentarily transpose to Waimanawa Bay for our show where the drone leads bring into our public and to others information about this emerging role and capability and technology that we all call drones or unmanned systems we're all kind of getting back together after the several recent hurricanes here and we thank very much George Purdy from the State Fire Department at the Lanai Airport on Lanai for joining us once again George thanks for coming on board and how things look on Lanai after a couple of days of pasting by by the by Olivia oh it's a beautiful day here on the night nice blue skies and well prepared okay so that was prepared and then we actually got kind of a light touch from miss Olivia as she went by she certainly didn't do quite what we expected on a wahoo so that was all good for all of us but we're expecting on a program Charles Warner of the National Council of unmanned air systems or drones in public safety but Charles on the east coast in Virginia is out assisting with hurricane Florence right now so he won't be joining us on the show and also John Johnson will get him on in probably four weeks John is one of our top creative artists using drones and what I really wanted to do George was with you and John was fused together the thinking between public safety use of drones disaster response use of drones which tend to be not artistic or or expressive in a way and just see how working with the the expressive side of the house such as what John Johnson is at the top of that profession how that might influence each other inform each other or improve the total operation certainly telling a story is an important factor whether it's in commercial art or in disaster operations but short of that again with the situation we have now what we want to do today is focus on something that came out of our conversation a couple of weeks ago when you were on the show we had the FAA on we had commercial helicopters Eric Lincoln on and we were talking about sharing the airspace and how we're all going to work this through the FAA standards with the other users of the airspace but but beyond that we have you introduced to us something that was quite unique and that was to what you've done online with the fire department is use the authorizations and authority you have presently provided to you through the state fire department design and if you've used that without changing it but you brought UAS into it in a controlled and responsible fashion and it will just talk a little bit more about that because I believe that's the essence of a talk you have to give in Alaska in two weeks and I think it's also something that Charles Warner would very much look upon to receive as for him to use as he's thinking about this situation in the National Council for Unmanned Air Systems and Public Safety so tell us in a little more detail George how you got that idea how you started and where it's going as a practice today on the island of Linaille. Well for me I was just looking at all our airport procedures and how do we look at our outside resources that come help when we have a plane crash so I took all those elements and looked at our MOUs on how we interact and work with each other so I looked at the point from taking some wildland firefighting fundamentals some of our aircraft rescue fundamentals and then looking at what the FAA has basically with all our foundations there was a line that was drawn of how we actually work together so I looked at it thought about it and then just the wording in general I talked to my fixed base operator here could you put in a nodem for me and he said yes I could so when we put it in we wrote it that we the fire department are asking for the UAS airspace from the airport center point four miles out that'll encompass our town the electric infrastructure harbor infrastructure and highways so our airport fits within five miles encompasses the whole island all the infrastructures that was needed so when I showed up to the incident for the emergency operations center I had this airport now that we can help provide the community and other first responders the communication and organization of all our local part one of seven operators and hobbyists I created two levels one and two that way I it's basically in the sense that I open up my house I open my door and I'm inviting you in it's not where you're gonna come into my house and barge in so through invitation RSVP you come we inspect you we get to know you we check your equipment we go through the whole protocols of flying the experience type I could also use them in helping me within my say office in paperwork getting them involved getting them to understand the overall picture on how we as emergency resources resource management manage the whole situation and educate there from within so you took a plan that existed which is the Lonay Airport plan that deals with the community around it within that four or five mile radius and that plan pre-existed pre-existed UAS pre-existed a lot of things but it caused and it defined a means of interaction between the various agencies that are responsible and so you took the implied responsibility in that interaction and you found that that justified and authorized to a certain extent the additional technology brought forward by UAS so you're not causing anybody to change any protocols you're simply writing on the protocols that exist and bringing this new technology in in a controlled way with a managed way and a graduated functionality way the more capable people are the higher level they can perform in that group if they're not at that level of experience they step back and operate a lower level but you've added this in a structured way UAS operations to an existing protocol and didn't have to generate any new protocols to make this all happen that's what I'm hearing you say is that a fair summary that's it as a fair summary it's all there at times you know sometimes we a lot of higher management over things it and just because the public screams wolf we should not take that as that is the end of all end of all things we should look at what's in our basic response plans and the use that as our foundation and figure out how the community works and what helps is that we come from the same community and the thing is every location we have members that live in these communities that can go home and educate their communities so actually using this thing two ways you're using it to provide a means and a method by which new technologies such as UAS can come into the picture you're also using it as a reverse flow to get information out to the community about how the coordinated joint operating system works in disaster response that's exactly right oh we may have lost George's picture here there we go I'm back yeah okay so you could actually think of this as a model for additional technology to be added for example underwater unmanned systems we saw one that Micah modus and kind of a gymnast from Colea Gold were demonstrating to the Coast Guard last week these are now available you know for a couple thousand bucks you can get the hundred foot tether underwater robotic system for so for the harbor and seco series inspecting issues like pilings of bridges or or piers anything underwater that might have be a has has met situation or something some issue going on that's available as well so you could even think of bringing the underwater folks in to the game at some point in time in the future following all the I wouldn't call them protocols but all the understandings you generated that sit on top of that one pre-existing protocol yeah I mean all our departments we only can do so much so when we hit these big natural disasters anything that exceeds our normal capabilities our normal resources that's when these protocols and these links to all these agencies actually come into play so for example our hurricane season that means that everybody's coming to the table what are you bringing how can we help each other and how can we use these new technologies in a manageable way so basically what I created is that we as airports for this community which I understand and know my community and because I'm in the UAS game I can actually bring them in invite them in and educate them and actually put them to work in a safe environment and that's key as long as they're safe responders are safe nobody's gonna say no that's that's a the fact that you're on one IE which is 3100 population a single airport and everybody pretty much knows each everybody else you're related to quite a few people George in the silent for example it's a it's a great place where the the pre-existing knowledge base exists and the trust and the confidence exists and you can create something like you like you've done how do you see taking what you've done here and translating that over to Maui for example or to Oahu or to Charles Warner's area in Virginia well this is where we get the media and that artistic person with the drones where we create positive articles of what we're doing and sharing it with these communities where it's coming from the community accepting and volunteering and coming to the call of emergency management on a large scale and then over time once on a large scale that we get this accomplished you can break down these components and then you can install them into your local fire department local police department local DNR but when the time need in me when we are in need we can actually come together and all everybody brings a piece of the puzzle and we have just a massive data collection of organizations with all types of technology well I think we we sort of have an obligation to bring this up and look at it from all kinds of perspectives when Charles is back from chasing Hurricane Florence because I think this is an important element that might be overlooked and as you say as people tend to think too big on things I often fall into that trap that you mentioned of overthinking the situation and we maybe need to underthink it a little bit and start with what is already there and make sure we capitalize on everything we can without having to invent anything new and that's exactly the policy you've created so I think we collectively have the obligation to put that into a discussion that can occur up in Alaska in a couple of weeks and then get that over to Charles as well in Virginia see what he thinks and how that can be camp become part of the emerging general strategy here and what what's intriguing is to me anyway is it there are standards starting to form up everywhere there's technical standards forming up in the structure and the materials and propulsion there are a STM f-38 takes care of that there are communication and software standards beginning to show up coming out of our TCA we'll hear more about that is as they come closer and some of those organizations that are setting up standards really need to know the operational side of the house as well as the technical side of the house in order to make those standards as useful as they can be in supporting what you're doing so we need to somehow get you and in Charles in front of these other standards organizations and make sure that as the standards are developed they continue to continue to fit the operational operational framework of reality and let's talk about so one of my ideas is why I came up with the protocol was I need to be able to teach a brand new fresh recruit firefighter with no experience behind him how to get him to understand it in the most simplest form because if you look at our party partners today we have many recruit classes not of us who are veterans we're leaving so we need to be able to pass that information on and when I'm now part of that community as a retired person I want to make sure my fire department running the way I left it and do it better let's talk about that the broader educational context of this after we get back from our one minute break hey Stan the energy man here on think take Hawaii and they won't let me do political commentary so I'm stuck doing energy stuff but I really like energy stuff so I'm going to keep on doing it so join me every Friday on Stan the energy man at lunchtime at noon on my lunch hour we're going to talk about everything energy especially if it begins with the word hydrogen we're going to definitely be talking about it we'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner how we can make the world a better place just basically save the planet even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore we got it nailed down here so we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan the energy man Aloha I am Howard wig I am the proud host of cold green for think take away I appear every other Monday at three and I have really really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency hope to see you there it is still the noon hour on Thursday folks Ted Rawlson here downtown Honolulu studio think take away George Purdy joining us from the airport fire department on Lonay and George's is absolutely one of our leaders in the state and certainly in the nation and thinking through how to take complex new technology and add it to the existing protocols of public safety joint operations that's a mouthful but I do want to also thank George for all the thought leadership he's provided to me have enjoyed that very much we were talking just before the break about the means by which new recruits coming into your fire department or anybody's department whatever it might be how we need to leave something behind that they can grasp on to without having to have them reinvent the future how do we take what we've done collectively or singly and convert that into a policy or a methodology then can serve those coming behind and both you and I my myself way beyond you George or notice my hair is getting kind of white and won't be doing this forever so it's up to us to leave something behind that attracts that kind of new idea and but sets a stage for how it can be incorporated safely and effectively I think we have both on the on the department level or the agency level we also have a joint obligation to work with the schools and educational system so once again with the leadership that you are able to profess and perform on the night how do you see that George in both the department you work in and then how do we broaden that to bring it into the schools in general well I'm looking at bringing it into the schools after this hurricane season especially our graduating seniors juniors and soft wars and we have a day on what we call job day where we actually go to our schools and we're in uniform or bring all our equipment and we sit at the booth and we educate the students that you know who would want to be a fireman one day who wants to live on this island and then we show them the new technologies we explain what we do and how do we serve and help our communities and we look at disasters across the world and we just want to help people okay and so that's certainly the top-level picture in terms of the specific aspect of drones and UAS if you think about that from a from a high school student perspective and combining that with the need to serve the public that you have over in the fire department some form of connective curriculum would need to be constructed that can rely on the existing doctor and you put in place but also allow the more free-thinking kids to start thinking about how they might make that better what if we had a like a competition of some kind help the fire department just to coin a coin a phrase how would that work having a way to induce the kids to think about how they might assist bringing these kind of technologies forward and that doesn't include just UAVs underwater vehicles as well also social media what if we sort of had that how we would how do we encourage the kids to think out of the box as you think out of the box as you and I exit stage right I would say like for me as a fire department I would take my island and my fire department go into the schools and I'll be there adaptive department of department giving them the scenarios and together we'll work together on accomplishing our scenario right a paper on it we do videos and then maybe we could submit it and we have every island a fire department for like me I'm a parent there's many other firemen friends that I know our parents that their kids are in school we could do it I like competition submit videos written documentation of what we've done and how we accomplished it and go from there and then maybe pull up a trophy with think tech on TV maybe we sending in videos and put a small show together and do something that we can something we can do like a legal legal league robotics that framework works so you actually have the I just say we're suffering from the the two or three second time delay here on our comms but that's that's a interesting idea now robotics and the various competitions that exist generally are against a a somewhat fictitious challenge such as robot wars or something like that and they're set in a in a conference room or set in a gymnasium environment if we took that as a base and thought of an outdoor environment a real issue wildfire for example search and rescue in the ocean the things that really matter the things where budget is being spent the things where people are at risk and are being addressed because of that and have a competition you know once again at the at the high school level just thinking about this out loud here first time we've ever had this conversation George but a means by which that group of people can think through how they would solve that problem based on what we've created already which may not be the best in their mind I just wonder who we would get to sponsor that and what what the next next step would be after somebody wins it what do we do do we actually implement but that's something that maybe in a national organization like like AUVSI would be interested in I know AUVSI sponsors Robot X out here in Anahu which will be in Keke Lagoon again this year which is kind of a high-level graduate level but we need to make these connections with the with the with the formal agencies starting in the high school level at the high school level well I totally agree this actually creates a two-way street it creates us the first responders getting information to our future first responders and these kids in school actually go back home and start talking with their parents and it with this competition just like how my son's in football right now they want to come out and see so now you start bringing in everybody around the students and this technology and just a simple form of threat that they figured out how to accomplish it with using these tools so key thing to any emergency out here is we always try to get that information like how on this storm there was not enough information going around or there's a lot of information going around these are the things that what I've just seen in the last 48 hours that this little program that we're talking about could take off and you know there's a the more we talk about this the more sense it makes I mean we've had an interaction with Kale Loa Intermediate School and the airport in the John Rogers Airport on the West Oahu you've had so much interaction on Lanai Airport we could even bring the FAA into this picture because certainly whatever we do is going to have to conform to FAA standard and emerging management functions for UAS but it would be unfair to ask you to start this on Lanai but it's also fair to ask you with that because you do it so well and because you have everything set already there but nevertheless we think we have a phone call next week with Aerospace States Association which Hawaii is part of we have the AOPA have AUVSI somewhere in and we have Charles Warner and the National Council for UAS Ops in public safety four organizations that I think all would be really interested in this high school level competition how do we again quoting how do we take this kind of technology and bring it into the in this case the fire service with local knowledge and local application being the measure of success I will absolutely bring this up with our friends on AOPA who've been on the show and and Aerospace States Association maybe we can put together a two or three paragraph proposal even toss it out in Alaska in a couple of weeks and to see if we can get this get this started because it's there it's those kids who are going to be inheriting the fire department they're gonna be inheriting the fires they're gonna be inheriting the island and why not have them have this taken ownership right now and once again so that we can make sure the standards as they emerge in unmanned air systems conform meet and support that kind of necessary civil responsibility exactly and I think it'll help the healing between government and community and the community won't feel like we're infringing on their privacy flying over them because we have that interaction we're doing something positive and you're teaching that next generation not to be that person that's out there doing bad things so very refocusing them to do something good that is a very compelling reason just in itself actually it also the standards have an influence on the way manufacturers perform it as well so we would be able to get actual in this case firefighting needs baked into the required the design requirements let alone the certification offering requirements so George we're gonna have some time to get her in a couple weeks same place in where it's cold and by the way yeah when you step off the airplane in Fairbanks it's okay to have Zori on during the flight but probably need shoes and socks on the end because it's going to be cold up there George and yeah so anyway surf shorts probably won't work in the forty degree climate either so be just caution on that one anyway so I like this idea and I like the idea of us getting to get her sketching something out see what the people the organizations that are kind of above us would how they would respond to this but make this an annual event competition once again as we're saying in here a competition and a very much an applied robotics competition I would say is what it is it isn't just a competition robotics it's applied it's applied and there's a real-world effect yeah it's applied and you measure it in the real world effect the value at measure that the real world and with actual real-world people such as fire department members providing comment and feedback on that what's been what's been designed and developed and proposed it's sort of like a science fair it's an applied science fair dealing with real issues that are emerging and in fact that could actually be the means by which we deal with these emergent big picture changes like climate change like global warming I mean all the hurricanes we've had here in Hawaii in the last couple of years we never had any of those when it was cute what's that Makani Pahili there yeah it would be a Makani Pahili junior right that that the level it actually we should do it on the onset of hurricane season and you know we work for after hurricane season we introduce what the students and the schools has provided and their presentation at Makani Pahili and then we're ready into the hurricane season so this could be we can actually take that hurricane season dissected what issues that we had that's the problems that these kids solve and we bring that solution as the next hurricane season I like your activity George has flying all over the place that's great we have about a minute before we we run out of air time here but let's talk about that because the timing is cool that you suggest that Makani Pahili is in May or June school the school semester ends in that same time period so this could be a two-seme a two-semester buildup and actually that the test is participation at a scholastic level in Makani Pahili that's it and I think you may recall Makani Pahili about five years ago online I here and I will be first met that had this our very first discussion so okay so your hands waving this is exciting stuff exciting to me to think of how we can bring the kids into it and also serve real missions not just robotics competitions missions that they're certainly related but we have higher goals here in mind by this means so you and I will be spending time together we can write this up propose it maybe here to the National Guard and see if we can't generate I guess what we're talking about is an academic or probably a scholastic level in Makani Pahili played out locally on each island and because there's more community members than there are first responders okay so now we just reverse the role and we we are creating citizen first responders to help the professionals I like that and at this point in time we have taken the obligation to work this out you and I will do that and folks this is the end of our 30-minute time period for today so Ted Rawlsson here in Honolulu and George Purdy and Lanai George thanks for coming on again and all the bright ideas that always thank you I will say that we have to limit George to three bright ideas per show otherwise we can't handle them all so George we hit what went over on this one yeah thanks a lot George we'll see you in a couple weeks bye all right a couple weeks folks