Episode 221: Collaborative Skies: Public Safety Aviation with Coitt Kessler

Episode notes

How is the shift towards collaboration and data-driven decision-making transforming the public safety industry?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

Welcome back to this 20-episode Texas Robotics Summit Mini Series! This 4 day event (March 4-7, 2024) was hosted at the Reveille Peak Ranch and by our friends at Granite Defense , and showcased the use of robotics (air/water/ground) in public safety via keynote presentations, training scenario stations, roundtable conversations, and more.

In this episode:

Emphasizing teamwork in public safety drones

The transformative power of collaboration and technology

Data-driven approaches shaping the future of emergency response

Hear from Coitt Kessler - a Customer Success Manager at DroneSense, Inc.

Coitt talks about gratitude, community, collaboration, and the evolution of public safety aviation. We cover the IAFF IAFC Drone Working Group, an initiative to develop cohesive strategies and best practices. This drives the importance of data-driven decision-making, especially with the upcoming rollout of NERIS from USFA.

We also explore the role of leadership and the shift in conversations within the public safety industry. The focus is on continued growth, service, and the power of teamwork.

So click play now to hear what he has to share! And stay tuned for the next Mini Series episode!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Kevin's intro: the Texas Robotics Summit mini-series
2. 0:45 Coitt Kessler joins on day three at the ranch
3. 1:35 Seeing the community's progress each year
4. 3:16 The IAFF and IAFC drone working group
5. 5:27 Mike O'Shea, the FAA and the evolution of public safety aviation
6. 8:15 Working with NIST, DOI and wildland partners
7. 9:25 FEMA, the US Fire Administration and NERIS
8. 11:28 A tent over the pod and a Packers and Cowboys bet
9. 12:35 Support from the US Fire Administrator
10. 14:55 From beginner to intermediate conversations
11. 15:57 What's top of mind for the next nine months
12. 18:15 Props back to Kevin for getting the word out
13. 19:02 Mic drop: team
14. 20:00 Closing thanks

Questions answered in this episode

What is the IAFF-IAFC drone and robotics working group?

Coitt Kessler explains it brings together the International Association of Firefighters (over 342,000 members in North America) and the International Association of Fire Chiefs (international membership) to develop cohesive strategy for policy, best practices, concept of operations, and training programs for drone and robotics use in the fire service.

Hear it at 3:25

Why does Coitt Kessler call drones pieces of plastic that pull us together?

He says that one drone in the air pulls together crewed and uncrewed resources, EMS, emergency management, law enforcement, and fire service, because everyone operates in the national airspace and needs that information.

Hear it at 5:27

What is NERIS and why does it matter for public safety aviation?

Coitt Kessler describes NERIS, the replacement for NFIRS, as a reporting database that captures relevant data and allows good informed decisions. He says the days of relying on anecdotal stories are over and this has to be data-driven to direct policy and legislation with real numbers.

Hear it at 10:09

How has the conversation about drones in public safety changed recently?

Coitt Kessler says the conversation has moved from beginner questions like how do you start a program or what are your policies, to intermediate topics like airspace separation when working with helicopters and tactics at multi-alarm fires.

Hear it at 14:57

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 221 transcript

Collaborative Skies: Public Safety Aviation with Coitt Kessler

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Coitt Kessler

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to a 20-episode mini-series at the Texas Robotics Summit hosted by our friends at Granite Defense. We dive into the evolving world of drones and robotics in public safety aviation. Through 20 fantastic conversations with leaders across public safety, from the fire service, law enforcement, EMS operations, wildlife management, and more, we explore the challenges, and the critical role of technology in enhancing emergency services operations. A special thanks to the sponsor of the Smart Firefighting Podcast, W.S. Darley & Company, for making this podcast possible. Enjoy the show. Officially day three on the ranch, alongside brother from another mother, Coitt Kessler from DroneSense. Coitt, how you doing?

[0:53] Coitt Kessler: My man, my man. Actually, I'm relieved to be here. Like this is actually what I needed right now. this is a good place to be with all these guys. It's family that comes together, it's a reunion. I'm thankful to be here, not happy, thankful.

[1:06] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, man, the ditto. I'm very grateful, I'm very grateful for the Mike Massarinos of the world to connect us. But you know how they say all roads lead to Rome? Really the true phase is all roads lead to Coitt. The amount of people and the amount of people that you have helped in certain capacities to bring their different programs from zero to one and then one to 50 and now 50 to 75 is really remarkable. So what have you done? What are you drinking? Like what's in the water?

[1:35] Coitt Kessler: Deflect. You threw that whatever without me knowing. All right, listen, this is not the great part of being here and the great part of seeing the family and everybody that we were spending this time with. And not only this event, I mean, we got drone responders, conferences gonna be coming up next week. Whenever we get together, we get to see the progress of everybody. We get to see how everybody's moving forward and helping one another with sharing their experiences. And it's good because you've got a year in between these events and you get to see where somebody has started, the calls they've had, what policy they've initiated. It's just really validating to see what happens when a team comes together and does something as a team. I cannot overemphasize that word as team and how this community, we're really good at showing up on scene. We're really good at doing our normal day jobs. And this is becoming part of our normal day, daily work, which a couple of years ago, Kevin, that wasn't the case. Like it was just kind of an outlier that was coming in. We all knew that this was going to happen. But I think that we also knew that we all had to come together to make this happen, to make it another tool in the trunk or the other tool in the truck. And this is actually happening. This is becoming very commonplace.

[2:56] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, it's no more just pie in the sky and people kind of saying, oh, it's quite cute project. It's Preston's cute project or it's Preston's cute Charles Woodson Green Bay Packer jersey. It's a team initiative and I love that. And one of the kind of team initiatives that I know that you've launched that I'm really proud to be a part of and I want to kind of hear the origin story and what it's doing is the IAFF, IAFC drone working group, robotics working group. Why does it exist and what is it doing?

[3:25] Coitt Kessler: Okay, so we have the International Association of Firefighters, which is a representative organization for North America. So we have over 342,000 people that are part members of the IAFF. And then we have the IAFC, which is the International Association of Fire Chiefs. That representative organization is international, right? We've got IAFC members all throughout the world. And our two organizations have come together as a team to help develop like a cohesive strategy for policy, for best practices, for us to be able to share what's working. So concept of operations, you hear that term CONOPS. If we have somebody over on the East Coast sharing that with the West Coast and the guys here in the central US being able to speak with our homies up in Canada, we're able to pull together what is working and develop a message that everybody else can grab onto and run with. So I mentioned the team. I mean, we have plays. Whenever any sports we have, we have plays. We're developing those plays now. We're developing the training programs for those plays when we get on the field and we're working. The really cool thing about this stupid technology that we're talking about, drones today, right, or robotics, is these little pieces of plastic, these little pieces of metal, I always say the little pieces of plastic that pull us all together. That one piece of plastic in the air is pulling together crude and uncrewed resources, right? Because we're in the national airspace. We have to work with, we're public safety aviation. It's not just crude aircraft anymore. That stupid piece of plastic pulls EMS, emergency management, law enforcement, and the fire service all together because we all need that information. So the faster that we can do that safely, the faster that we can embrace this safety, this aviation culture, right, for public safety-ation, the faster that we can do that and be able to pull our team together and run those plays, the faster we can come out and really make a difference for those that we serve.

[5:27] Kevin Sofen: And we had Mike O'Shea from FAA on the pod yesterday, and he was talking all about just the kind of the evolution of the FAA with public safety. Initially, people were booing him, and now there's people taking photos of him. I mean, he asked for selfies, And I think the kind of the perception of less so of, hey, WTF, FAA, why are you in this to being like, you know what, actually, there's really a good sort of song and dance and imbalance that we can find here. And I think it's ultimately starting to look at, again, not just someone's side project or just cute or stupid little piece of plastic flying in the sky. But when I think FAA, I think initially of traveling on planes and how incredibly safe they are and how incredibly regulated it is and how incredibly just pragmatic and all everything is focused on, what's on the first slide? Safety. And but now moving towards this kind of public safety aviation where it's not just manned craft in the sky, obviously there's different scopes of that, but also unmanned. This public safety aviation and this evolution with FAA, it's come a long way but tell me about kind of like where it is now and sort of where we need to continue to go to continue to make it just commonplace knowledge that public safety aviation includes both manned and unmanned aircrafts.

[6:41] Coitt Kessler: Yeah, so incredibly important. And you're absolutely right with the FAA. You know, this is, it is a song and dance and we can't do it without them and they can't do it without us. So we're, I mentioned the word team is the word that goes forward from here on out. Team is the FAA being part of that group. Team is us developing these procedures that we can go out and operate with. We've got a group here that's represented on the wild land side, and you're going to have an opportunity to speak with our friends from the Colorado Center of Excellence. That is wild land heavy, right? Department of Interior has been working with manned aircraft, crewed aircraft, dropping water on these large fires for a very long time. Now we're coming into that space, and we are working with them. If we don't do this right, nobody wins. Everybody loses if we don't do this right. So we have to plug in, as I mentioned, public safety aviation. We've got to plug these pieces of plastic into the national airspace. And we've got to learn how to operate together the same way that these crude resources have been doing forever. Well, we've just got to plug into the airspace. We have to do this the right way, the smart way. If we don't, nobody wins. And that's not what this game is about. So I think that's a big part of our IAFF IAFC initiative is to develop these concept of operations, the training, to allow us to more effectively get into the airspace and safely accomplish our mission. And we're doing that, I mean, we're working with, I'm looking over to my left here, got all the homies from NIST, right? Our program that we're moving forward is, the hands-on portion is very geared towards an evaluation, initial evaluation with National Institute of Standards and Technology through our aerial test methods and doing a currency, I'm going to use that term currency because that's aviation, our currency every year being able to evaluate your equipment and your people using a standardized test method. That makes sense in aviation. We have the basis of this, it's almost like a small puzzle, it's not even a big puzzle. You put all these pieces together and we're able to get into the airspace and actually do some work. Again, the wildland side, they've been doing this forever, Kev. It's a very long time, but now we have FEMA that is bringing in UAS. So now we're talking about hurricane responses, right? We're talking about these natural disasters that we're going to be doing the same thing. So let's take what our homies on the DOI side, the NWCG, the wildland side, take what they've learned. Let's bring that over on the FEMA side. Let's accomplish our mission with that stupid piece of plastic in the sky.

[9:25] Kevin Sofen: Well, you mentioned FEMA, and so I'd be remiss not to double-click into that a little bit, but from some of our friends over there, from Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell, Theresa Neal, Rebecca Harned, all of them out there, they're doing great, amazing work. But obviously, their biggest, one of their biggest priorities that is kind of overarching all things public safety is the rise of NERIS. And NERIS, obviously, everyone has their own thoughts and opinions about NFIRS and what was it, how it was used, you know, its goals, and then what happened, and it had some good, and it's bad and it's kind of now outdated, in comes NERIS. And I would love to kind of hear from your sort of interpretation of who, what, when, where, why NERIS and how that even plugs into what we're doing here today.

[10:09] Coitt Kessler: I'm really glad you mentioned the fire administrator. Dr. Moore and her team, he mentioned Evrem, their team has been incredible supporters of moving this forward. I mean, they're seeing that, hey, this is another tool that we got to put in the team's hand and we got to move it forward. Another one of the tools that they're bringing forward to our community is NERIS. And with NERIS, that being the replacement system for infers, reporting a database that can actually capture the relevant, it's a lot of data, but then using that data to make good informed decisions to support us moving forward. The days of us coming together and using anecdotal stories, just saying, hey, will we experience this in this place and this is what we did, that's great. And that worked in 2020, maybe 2019. But this has got to be data-driven. The anecdotal stuff has got to go away. This has got to be based on data. NERIS gathers that information that we need and allows us to make really good, informed decisions so we can direct policy. We can look at legislation and come at this with real numbers, not somebody saying this was just the right thing to do. And I really love how the fire administrator, fire administration has embraced that.

[11:28] Kevin Sofen: We are actively getting an upgrade. I'm so happy. This day one, I was wearing a sort of a little shirt over my head, but now the wonderful staff here at the ranch is putting a tent over us. Oh, wow. I couldn't be happier.

[11:44] Coitt Kessler: These are the homies.

[11:47] Kevin Sofen: This is top notch here.

[11:49] Coitt Kessler: Oh, wow. I can't see what's going on. Kevin and I were just sitting in the blazing sun.

[11:54] Kevin Sofen: I am so happy. I've dropped my wife's Instagram account a few times, Sun Safety Sisters. It's all about redundancies, it's about UPF clothing, it's about SPF, it's about shade. And now I can actually probably take this little shirt hat configuration off. God, Preston, you look so good in the Packers jersey. Does anybody want to tell you that?

[12:14] Coitt Kessler: Preston Culver is a DCs.

[12:16] Kevin Sofen: He's a diehard Cowboys fan. And I won't, this is the only time I'm gonna bring it up in this pod, diehard Cowboys fan, we made a little bet before we were actually doing the pod, promoting this event and something happened where the Packers beat the Cowboys, at Lambeau South, okay, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna bring it up again, but Preston, love you, man. And wow, this just-

[12:33] Coitt Kessler: Makes a difference.

[12:34] Kevin Sofen: So what were you talking about?

[12:35] Coitt Kessler: Yeah, we were talking about the US Fire Administrator and the administration supporting this initiative moving forward, the IAFF, the IAFC, you know, having the support at the very top makes all the difference in the world. And when we're talking about our group, this IAFF IAFC robotics working group coming together and making recommendations, we've got to have a champion at the top. And Dr. Moore is it, I mean, she's, she's a top for us.

[13:06] Kevin Sofen: I mean, every time I talk with Dr. Lori, I just want to run through a brick wall and just be on her team and do whatever I can to continue on voice. And I think, granted, I've been, I've been working in the public safety industry for 12 years. I know you've had your run within public safety and now the industry side. But I will definitely say that I've seen a huge shift in terms of the willingness of the groups like the, and granted, maybe I'm speaking incorrectly, but seeing the groups like International Association of Fire Chiefs, International Association of Firefighters, National Volunteer Fire Council, all these other three and four government letter agency organizations in private industry really wanting to work together and sort of the idea of checking your egos at the door and driving towards actually wanting to come together in this kind of environment and drive towards the mission of making first responders better, faster, safer, allowing first responders to do their job more effectively, saving property and lives. You know, I think that's, I see it, I feel it. And I think it's just a lot of kudos testament to Lori's work.

[14:03] Coitt Kessler: 100%, she's amazing. And her team's amazing. You mentioned Nevermind and team. They've been so powerful with empowering us. Empowering, right? We're gonna lift up our people that are underneath us and they're gonna allow us to serve better. That's the leadership that we require. I believe that through us developing the policies and procedures, a training program, being able to come up with concept of operations that are going to help lead everybody else out, we're gonna be able to do this much safer, much faster, and much more efficiently. That's the goal behind our team. We've got the upper level support, and that's what's really important here, Kev, is we're not talking about, hey, it's just our department's doing this. It's not just our state. We've got our representative organizations that are behind us 100%, and we're behind them.

[14:55] Kevin Sofen: Now you've just got to keep sprinting.

[14:57] Coitt Kessler: Yeah, it's a sprint. But we're getting it, man. I mean, think about this. Look around here. Look at how many people we have here. Look at what we're doing. This is incredible to see all these people coming together. And they're not talking. Nobody's asking, like, hey, how did you start your program? What do you do to start your program? They're saying, hey, what are you doing in the airspace when you have a helicopter flying with you? They're not saying, hey, could you tell us what your policies and procedures are? Like, hey, what about that, when you guys are over that multi-alarm fire, what are you guys doing for your tactics?

[15:23] Kevin Sofen: It's gone from beginner to intermediary. Granted, if you're still a beginner, that's okay, and we welcome you.

[15:27] Coitt Kessler: 100%, but this is, the conversations stop. I mean, the conversations change, excuse me.

[15:33] Kevin Sofen: Yeah.

[15:34] Coitt Kessler: Yeah, it's.

[15:35] Kevin Sofen: So we could talk about a thousand things, And I want to continue to keep the pods rolling today. But I think two kind of things I want to close out here with is, one, it's March 2024. What are you excited about in the remaining calendar year? Is there any sort of big events you're going to, or any sort of the IAFF, IAFC working group projects and initiatives? What's top of mind for the next nine months?

[16:00] Coitt Kessler: I'm excited about all of that, all the things.

[16:03] Kevin Sofen: Life, liberty, friendship, happiness.

[16:05] Coitt Kessler: Yeah, I'm excited about seeing the team continue to grow. You guys are going to have some really good friends from the Colorado Center of Excellence here in a minute. They're going to be talking with you. And that's part of our team. I'm looking at Dave Danielson, retired LA Fire. Dave is part of our team. And right now, he's on the NIST side. And he's also on the IAFF IAFC working group. To see all of us come together and be able to develop things that help other organizations that don't have what they need right now. That's what I'm excited about. And it's the reason I got into public safety is so I could help and I could serve. It's the reason I'm still part of public safety is so I can help and serve. I'm excited about seeing how many more people we can help and serve. I'm excited about getting away from, tell me about your policies and procedures. Tell me about how to start a program rather than, Hey, tell me about airspace separation. Tell me about being out and you working under incident command. Tell me about how we show up on one scene. And we have EMS, LE, and fire, and that we're all working together. Tell me how the state and the federal guys all work together. I'm excited about that. I'm excited about the team dominating and going out and serving better. That's happening. I mean, this is happening quick. And we're doing it through coming together events like this. We kind of reaffirm what we're all doing. And it also comes from us knowing each other's faces that are having each other's phone numbers.

[17:29] Kevin Sofen: That's big. It's been the tip of the spear in a lot of this, and I think we're gonna take a lot of lessons learned with the International Association of Fire Chiefs Technology Summit International in terms of using that as the narrow spring border for these kind of events. And though all these events are important, that's another reason why this podcast exists to keep the ball bouncing 365 days a year. Because while everyone's busy, they've got family, they've got kids, they've got work, they've got emails. So the point of this podcast is to help kind of fill those gaps of just continue to keep the ball rolling. But I said this earlier, and I think the guys behind me I would agree that the phrase all roads lead to Rome, but really all roads lead to Coitt and Coitt. You've done a great job. Just, you have been a spark plug for a lot of the good that's happened. So I think just on behalf of all of us, my firefighting, everyone, just thank you for what you've done and I.

[18:15] Coitt Kessler: I would love for you to be able to close out this, but I can't, I can't let you do that way.

[18:19] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I still have one more question for you.

[18:20] Coitt Kessler: Oh, that's too bad. I got one for you. I got a statement for you.

[18:23] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, please.

[18:23] Coitt Kessler: So you mentioned the, you know, our, the TSI, our technology summit, right? So, that is a great way to get us all to pull together. I saw you, Kevin, this is props back to you, right? And I can do this on the mic right now, is a couple of years ago, we got to know each other over at FDIC, the fire department instructors conference. And I got a chance to get to know you. And one of the things you said was like, hey man, what are you guys doing? And how do we get that word out? You're getting that word out through these pods. You're getting these words out through going to TSI. You're getting the word out. You're pulling us all together and you're giving us a voice. So we have that one voice. Props to you, my man.

[18:59] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, dude. I really appreciate it. One voice. We dropped the mic. But actually, I want to have a drop mic for you now. And I asked Charles, too, and everyone's been in the pod. So this is kind of a little spoiler for you guys. I asked this. Kind of the final parting thoughts here with each pod is a mic drop of sorts. If you have a question, a comment, a quote that you live by, or a challenge for everyone listening with us here today, what would that be? It doesn't also have to be robotics-related.

[19:26] Coitt Kessler: could be. I'm just going to use the word. I know it's so simple, but it's team. That's it. Like, that's it. I mean, I wish I wish I had something cooler to say, but I mean, really think about it. Team's everything. And that one word means everything to our community. That's how we get things done. And it's not about keeping it together, keeping it to yourself. It's not about that in any way. It's about going out and serving and we only can do that as a team. So that's my word. That's my mic drop team. That's all I got.

[19:55] Kevin Sofen: It's good to be part of your team, brother.

[19:57] Coitt Kessler: Thanks, brother.

[19:58] Kevin Sofen: Hey, till next time.

[19:59] Coitt Kessler: Thank you.

[19:59] Kevin Sofen: Appreciate you. Thanks for tuning into this miniseries created at the Texas Robotics Summit, hosted by Granite Defense. Make sure to put this amazing event on your calendar for 2025. For this podcast episode, what do you like? What do you think? Drop us a comment on social media and let us know your favorite quote. Thanks for all that you do and have a great day ahead.