Episode 245: Rapid Damage Assessment Using Drones & AI with Kendrick Faison

Episode notes

What can you learn from SpatialGIS ' use of drones and AI? Find out ↓

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!

In this episode:

How drones and AI for rapid damage assessment provide real-time data to first responders

How the NIST post-accelerator program can help your company grow and connect with the federal marketplace

Why mentorship and community collaboration are keys to success and growth

Hear from Kendrick Faison - the President/CEO of SpatialGIS .

Kendrick talks about the innovative use of drones and AI machine learning for rapid damage assessment during disasters, providing real-time data to first responders to enhance decision-making. He also shares insights into their work in the national security space, focusing on cloud services and computer vision.

Kendrick highlights the benefits of participating in the NIST post-accelerator program, which has helped the company build relationships and gain exposure in the federal marketplace. Looking ahead, he outlines plans for scaling Spatial GIS, hiring more employees, and pursuing larger projects within the federal government.

Throughout the conversation, Kendrick also emphasizes the importance of mentorship and community collaboration for business growth and success.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share!

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 Intro to the 5x5 miniseries with FirstNet and NIST
2. 0:38 Kendrick Faison of Spatial GIS joins
3. 0:50 Pitching rapid damage assessment at the 5x5
4. 1:26 From FEMA's geospatial lead to drones and AI
5. 2:24 Active projects in the national security space
6. 3:38 How real-time assessment helps FEMA and states decide
7. 4:56 What the NIST accelerator gave them
8. 6:45 Next six months: scaling the firm
9. 7:49 Relationship capital
10. 8:37 How you make people feel
11. 9:09 Final words: mentorship and each one teach one
12. 10:21 How to connect
13. 10:54 Wrap

Questions answered in this episode

What is rapid damage assessment with drones and how does it work?

Kendrick Faison explains that traditional drone damage assessment requires landing the drone, removing the memory card, and processing it, which creates lag time. His company is developing AI machine learning to let drones do the damage assessment themselves and relay information in real time back to first responders and incident managers.

Hear it at 1:26

How does real-time drone damage assessment help emergency response?

Kendrick Faison says it puts more boots on the ground by freeing up resources that would have been sitting in a room doing yes-no damage assessments. Those resources can then focus on life-saving actions in the critical first 24 to 48 hours after a disaster, and it helps ensure survivor funding is allocated properly.

Hear it at 4:09

What did Kendrick Faison get from the NIST Accelerator program?

The program ran eight to ten months and covered how to pitch, create a business plan, handle small business requirements, financial planning, and how to scale. It also exposed participants to the federal procurement cycle and provided networking opportunities, including pitching to 600 people in a Shark Tank style format.

Hear it at 5:10

What is Kendrick Faison's advice for business owners and entrepreneurs?

He stresses that relationship capital is the best capital and quotes his mentor John Hope Bryant on that point. He also emphasizes mentorship and a community approach, saying as much as given, much as required, and that you cannot do it by yourself. He recommends seeking out free business development programs and mentions having mentors and what he calls a kitchen table concept.

Hear it at 7:02

Transcript

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

Ep 245 transcript

Rapid Damage Assessment Using Drones & AI with Kendrick Faison

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Kendrick Faison

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 the Smart Firefighting Podcast. In this mini-series, hosted at the 5x5 Conference with FirstNet and NIST, we're diving into some of the most exciting new technologies supporting first responders. We'll talk about how tools like augmented reality, AI-powered drones, and advanced UAV systems are helping fire departments and emergency teams work smarter, faster, and safer. You're going to hear from people on the front lines of and innovation, shaping real-world stories about how these tools are making a difference. Stay tuned and enjoy. We are here at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago at the 5x5, alongside Kendrick Faison with Spatial GIS. Kendrick, how you doing?

[0:45] Kendrick Faison: Hey, Kevin. How you doing?

[0:47] Kevin Sofen: I'm doing well. So what brings you to Chicago? Why are you here for the 5x5?

[0:50] Kendrick Faison: Well, Kevin, I think what brought us here today is that we just finished up the NIST Accelerator program and this week we had opportunity to with the FirstNet 5x5 conference able to be able to pitch our ideas to a group of qualified first responders and government officials, academic folks. So we're here today just showing off our rapid damage assessment with the use of drones process that we've developed last year with UC Berkeley.

[1:18] Kevin Sofen: It's pretty clear right here you said it says rapid damage assessment using UAV drones. tell me more about that. Why are you doing that and how are you doing that?

[1:26] Kendrick Faison: Yeah, so Kevin, you may not know my background. I actually used to be the National Geospatial Lead at FEMA. And one of the things when I was there, I always kind of looked at what were areas that we needed to improve in. And one of the things with any disaster is what we call damage assessment. Those things have to be executed before there's any federal disaster. But one of the things that most people are doing is starting to use drones. But the way the drones are, you have to fly the drone, put the drone down, take the memory card out, take the memory card out, and then process it. A lot of lag time. And so with the rapid damage assessment, with the adverse adaptation of AI machine learning, we're working on trying to develop a language model that will allow the drones themselves to be able to do that damage assessment and then relay the information back down to our first responders so that the incident manager has the opportunity to have real-time data to make those decisions, but then also to get those fundings out to our citizens and survivors.

[2:24] Kevin Sofen: I mean, like you said, you've lived it, you've seen it, and so I'm glad to see that you've kind of now taken this and turned it into a functioning business. And I'm now looking at sort of some of your, this great capability statement. I will say that many companies, they lack this capability statement, but something that's very simple, past performance projects, core competencies. Tell me a little bit about some of the active projects that you've got going on in kind of a case study of how this is being deployed today.

[2:47] Kendrick Faison: Yeah, I mean, we're working with in the national security space. I mean, most of our book of business is in the national security space. I'm actually a former federal employee as well. So one of the things that we are kind of engaging ourselves in and trying to build a book of business is in the cloud services, but also AI machine learning, which a lot of companies are, but really looking at that on the national security side as well. So there is a need for real-time damage assessments and computer vision opportunities to identify apparatuses, houses, many things through a program called MAVEN, the program out of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and it kind of aligns itself to what we're doing here from the first response side of it, but it's really trying to understand those, not just ChatGPT, AI machine learning, but really those large language models and trying to get those built out.

[3:38] Kevin Sofen: And to give me a little bit more context on like the real-time damage assessment and using these different, using drones, which are a mechanism to put cameras and sensors and different optics in the sky and then being able to transcribe that, translate that and kind of synthesize in some capacity real time. How does that help, like, let's say a group like FEMA, or how does that help some sort of state or federal response group make better decisions in that sort of immediate 72 hour window in the short term and even long term, you know, one, six months out?

[4:09] Kendrick Faison: Just in reality, you're putting more boots on the ground. And so you're taking resources that would have been relayed to sitting in the room and doing that yes, no, yes, no damage, and not to now putting those resources back in that really will help us with life-saving actions, right? And so, you know, the first 24 hours, first 24 to 48 hours when we go into a disaster is life-saving measures, right? And so what we're trying to do is we can't get more time, but how can we put more resources to time so that we ensure that survivors and funding that's being allocated is used properly? And I think AI machine learning is allowing us now, we're kind of peeking in the window of where we're going. But I think as we start to grow this process, there'll be way more opportunities for us to see how we reap the benefits of using the new tool sets.

[4:56] Kevin Sofen: Good stuff. And just to give it a little more context on the NIST program and the NIST work being here and what you've gone through and are expecting to go through with them. Tell me a little bit more about the program and how has that been beneficial to your operations?

[5:10] Kendrick Faison: Yeah, I think always in business exposure, but that's also opportunity. So behind the scenes, we went through about eight to 10 months of training. So we've talked about how to pitch, how do you do your business plan? What about SBRs? What about from a financial perspective, how do you scale your company up? And so I think not only did this give us this practical perspective, but it also gave us that lens in regards to be better business owners and also exposure to the federal marketplace. And so I saw a lot of my classmates in my cohort who were not familiar with the procurement cycle in the federal government now being exposed to that, and then also seeing resources. And then events like this, being able to walk the halls and now have an ability to stand in front of about 600 people and pitch your idea in a very Shark Tank approach, I think was most definitely an add on in regards to that, because most programs are kind of like a one and done, but there's no long stretch relationships. And even last night, we had opportunity to sit down with the FirstNet community to say, hey here are some of the areas and places where we really need to support and the NIST team was able to be there along with us and they're showing that this conversation is not just a you know we'll figure it out next conference that we are now thinking about having a battle rhythm and regardless and then even just while I've been here networking and opportunities and ways that we can grow our company or especially from Spatial GIS but ways that many of us can build our companies out I think has been very well seen this week.

[6:34] Kevin Sofen: That's good stuff yeah I mean the whole NIST and PSCR and FirstNet community. I mean, there's a lot of them here. I mean, granted it's their show, but kudos to Therese and the whole FirstNet team as well that are driving this. And it's June 2024. You're in the midst of this program, but what's the next six months look like for you? And this will probably air in maybe two months or so, but what's the next six months? And what are some top programs or travel or events or anything else in your radar coming up?

[7:02] Kendrick Faison: Well, fortunately, you're catching me on the back end. I've been on the road for eight weeks. So we are full service. We are a Salesforce company, IBM, AWS. And so what we're really kind of going to do in the next couple of months is really put our head down and really kind of look at some of the RFPs that we have out to talk about a scalability. How do we scale out the firm? We have some executive positions that we're going to be bringing about and kind of taking a little more maturity facet. We are, have been a part of a lot of good business development programs, EY, Ernst & Young's program, the Ascend program. We just finished SBA Thrive. And so what I've learned is as a CEO, it's been very important for us to be a part of these programs. One, it kind of helps us defer the costs in regards to scalability and understanding that piece. But the second thing is trying to build relationships with other large firms. And so our approach has been is finding right relationship. My mentor, John Hope Bryant says, the best capital to have is relationship capital. And so being at these conferences and being on the road for eight weeks has allowed us to shake hands and build relationships. Business is not about ones and twos, about relationships. It's about feelings. And they always say, you know, when I look at it, how do you make somebody feel? All right. And so that's me. I think that we want to make sure that we have a team approach to it. We have a very good group of employees now that believe in the vision and we're looking to hire more. So that scalability model is in effect and looking to see how we can get more involvement in a lot of bigger projects so that we can scale up and supply the federal government with good services and good capacity.

[8:37] Kevin Sofen: Man, you gave me the chills while I'm there for a second saying that because one of my other mentors as well, his name is Bill Darley, and he has this quote on the wall that says, people will forget what you said and people will forget what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel. And it's true, that's a great way to live, great way to build a business, and you've been on the road for eight weeks. So it is good to remember sometimes to take a step back and maybe to do a little bit more of the strategic work and foster that relationship capital because if you're on the road for a bit too much, you'll feel that burnout, I'm sure.

[9:08] Kendrick Faison: True, absolutely.

[9:09] Kevin Sofen: So any kind of final thoughts or if you could leave us with any sort of questioning challenge here. We would love any sort of, whether ways that people can get involved as well, but any sort of maybe final thoughts of ideas, wisdoms, favorite quote, as well as followed up by how people can get in touch.

[9:27] Kendrick Faison: Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is, I say this, as much as given, much as required. We're big on mentorship. I think that regardless of what stage you are in, there's a call on you to bring somebody up. So I think that's very important. One of the other things is that it's a whole community approach. I think that Craig Fugate brought this up when I worked at FEMA. And we believe it from a company perspective is that each one teach one. And so you can't do it by yourself. So understand the partnership and then from a CEO perspective, there are good days and bad days, right? And so being able to, what you're just talking about, having mentors, I have a new concept. what I call the kitchen's table, is that I believe in having mentors, people that have gone through this process. And again, some of these business development programs, they're free. And so, you know, sometimes they wouldn't say you get what you pay for, but in many cases, when you don't have to pay for it, you get good stuff. And so these kinds of programs go outlook, scavenge the internet, ask around. And then I think one of the things for us is the best way to find us is on LinkedIn. I have a very strong LinkedIn presence. They can also visit us on our website at www.spatialgisservices.com. And again, opportunities like this, Kevin, I say this, it's just nice to be nice. And so having you just come up and ask us to interview this today is just an example of just being nice and I really appreciate you doing so.

[10:44] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, man, I appreciate that. Being kind is a winning strategy.

[10:47] Kendrick Faison: Yes. So I agree about that.

[10:49] Kevin Sofen: Thanks so much for your time.

[10:49] Kendrick Faison: No problem.

[10:50] Kevin Sofen: Really enjoy getting to know you and look forward to staying in touch.

[10:52] Kendrick Faison: All right, thank you.

[10:53] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, dude. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Smart Firefighting Podcast. I would love to know what you think. Send me a note, send me a DM, post something on Twitter. Let us know what you think. Thanks again and have a great day.