In Canada, individual wildfire agencies are responsible for determining the value of new equipment and incorporating emerging technology into their wildfire operations. The process of identifying and comparing new technology can be overwhelming, contributing towards barriers to adoption. Agencies do not have a consolidated platform that allows them to search for equipment and services to meet their needs. In addition, vendors do not have a proper outlet to showcase their products to wildfire agencies.
FPinnovations in conjunction with the BCWS, have suggested a unified approach by creating an ‘equipment platform’ enabling vendors to add product and service information to a database that can be queried by interested agencies. Thus, agencies will have access to information about the latest products and services, have the ability to review and compare them, and see related vendor information.
