Smart Firefighting Podcast

Episode 283: CoTAK and the Push for Real-Time Emergency Coordination with Ben Miller

Published

Guests: Ben Miller

Topics: Leadership, TAK & Mapping

Episode notes

How can you focus on the mission, not the noise?

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 did Colorado build a shared infrastructure for all public safety agencies?

What’s the next evolution of PPE?

Insights on enabling true tech adoption

Hear from Ben Miller - the Director of the Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting .

Ben breaks down how CoTAK is helping bring TAK technology into daily operations for fire, law enforcement, and search and rescue teams across Colorado. He explains how CoTAK’s centralized, state-funded model is removing barriers to adoption and turning TAK into real-time software PPE for public safety.

The conversation digs into practical use cases, how agencies can manage data overload, and the leadership required to make meaningful tech adoption happen. Ben also shares why free isn’t the same as valueless, and why it’s time to rethink what modern protective equipment looks like.

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 from CivTAK 2024
  2. 0:42 Live with Ben Miller of the Center of Excellence
  3. 1:11 Who Ben is and what the Center of Excellence does
  4. 1:47 What CoTAK is: free, centralized TAK for Colorado
  5. 3:07 TAK as the operating system of public safety
  6. 4:37 Free isn't free: obstacles to adoption
  7. 6:10 A fire detection aircraft turns engines around
  8. 7:25 Managing data overload with channels
  9. 9:09 What's next: saving lives
  10. 9:50 Tradition, culture and TAK as PPE
  11. 11:20 CoTAK goes live
  12. 11:53 Adoption takes bold leadership
  13. 12:44 Where to learn more
  14. 13:30 Wrap

Questions answered in this episode

What is CoTAK and who does it serve?

Ben Miller says CoTAK is the state of Colorado's centralized TAK infrastructure, provided free of charge to any public safety agency in the state. He calls it real-time resource location service and describes it as the next generation personal protective equipment for first responders.

Hear it at 2:08

Why does Colorado provide CoTAK for free to agencies?

Ben Miller explains there are more than 3,000 public safety agencies in Colorado with budgets ranging from zero to tens of millions of dollars. Free access is almost as powerful as the technology itself, and centralized management creates interoperability across agencies of all sizes.

Hear it at 2:08

How did TAK help prevent a close call in Colorado?

Ben Miller recalls a fire detection aircraft saw fire engines heading down a road toward a fire. Because the aircraft had TAK and could see the engines' locations, the operator contacted the crews and warned them not to go around the next corner, getting them to turn around.

Hear it at 6:31

How does CoTAK handle data overload for users?

Ben Miller says the system uses a tool called Channels that lets users group data and turn channels on and off, just like a radio. Each channel has a data set such as groups of people, fire perimeters, or lightning, so users control what they see.

Hear it at 7:59

What is Ben Miller's message to firefighters resistant to new technology like TAK?

He says change and adoption are not easy but absolutely worth it. Technologies like TAK and real-time location services are the next generation of personal protective equipment. He compares it to ballistic vests in law enforcement, which required bold leadership decisions years ago.

Hear it at 10:33

Transcript

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

Ep 283 transcript

CoTAK and the Push for Real-Time Emergency Coordination with Ben Miller

Speakers: Ben Miller, Kevin Sofen

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 part two of our CivTAK 2025 miniseries, recorded on the floor from CivTAK 2024. Joining me today is Ben Miller from the Colorado Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting, also known as CoTAK. He shares how CoTAK is delivering TAK technologies across Colorado public safety agencies, creating real time location tracking and situational awareness. Ben explains how TAK is changing the game, making coordinating seamless and equipping first responders with next generation digital PPE. Let's dive into how CoTAK is shaping the future of public safety. Enjoy. Standing here live with our little portable podcast studio, Ben Miller with the Colorado Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting. Say that five times fast. Go.

[0:53] Ben Miller: Oh, man. I've tried. Yeah. Maybe someday I'll actually get the opportunity to adjust the name a little bit.

[0:59] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. No, I mean, in short, we go with CoTAK.

[1:01] Ben Miller: Yeah. Well, CoTAK's one of our projects. And now if we're kind of getting into the realm of actually deploying technologies to our users, it's one of our top products, I guess we could say.

[1:11] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. So for those of us that have been living under a rock, give me a little high level. Who is Ben Miller? And tell me about the Colorado Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting.

[1:19] Ben Miller: I always tell folks, well, I'm responsible, but definitely not in charge. The Center of Excellence is really just the research and development group within the state fire department in Colorado. So, and unique really to Colorado is the fact that our state fire department lives in the Colorado Department of Public Safety. Here's your civics 101 class. But that means that we get to interact with public safety folks across all the spectrums within the state of Colorado. So, not just in fire.

[1:47] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. And so we're here at CivTAK. You just gave a little presentation talking about different aspects of CoTAK, especially the idea of CivTAK is not military application of TAK, but civilian, fire, public safety. Tell me more about what is CoTAK and how CoTAK is sort of leading the charge with TAK adoption amongst public safety.

[2:08] Ben Miller: So CoTAK is really the state's play, if you will, in creating a place on all the connected infrastructure that it takes to use the TAK apps. We took the position after years and years of, you know, using the tool and putting it in the field and, you know, pilot projects and some other related research activities on the TAK apps themselves and thought, what's the missing component to this? And really, we think it's centralized management. We think that'll create interoperability. We're providing it free of charge to any public safety agency in the state of Colorado. And the free component is, we think, almost as powerful as the technology itself. There are more than 3,000 public safety agencies in the state of Colorado. Their budgets range from literally zero all the way up to tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. So technology like this, we think is critical. We call it real-time resource location service. We think that's the next-gen personal protective equipment, PPE.

[3:07] Kevin Sofen: You mentioned some phrase earlier about TAK being this interconnected fabric within public safety. Tell me, in your words, what is TAK and why is it needed and what's the true value of TAK within public safety?

[3:21] Ben Miller: TAK is really, I think, the operating system of day-to-day public safety services, those tactical services on the ground, in the field. Maybe not in the police car, the fire truck, or in the dispatch center, but definitely in the pocket of firefighters and law enforcement, search and rescue folks across the state of Colorado and really across the country. TAK is just so far advanced based on the development that it's received from the Department of Defense. Our estimates say that TAK has probably more than a $500 million current investment in the technology and development so far. And now as it transitions out of DOD over to the civilian side, I think it'll take organizations like the state of Colorado and specifically the Division of Fire Prevention and Control to take a leadership role and to say, hey, this is great technology. And we're willing to write the check to make it available for agencies of all shapes and sizes. And we think by doing so, that really creates that interoperability component to it, where TAK is not the only technology out there that does what TAK does. But we think TAK is the way to provide it economically to all agencies across the state so that we can hit that interoperability goal of all agencies can see each other when it's appropriate to do so. Any agency of any size has access.

[4:37] Kevin Sofen: So, I'm picking up what you're putting down, and I think most people here at the show would agree with everything you just said. But why isn't there this larger mainstream adoption of TAK? And what are some of these obstacles? Some I've heard is because it's free. People perceive free as being, if I'm not paying for it, then it must not be valuable. Or it's this big, all-encompassing software. Where do I start? What are these obstacles that you see? And how do we continue to change the narrative on how TAK can be that unifying public safety common operating picture?

[5:06] Ben Miller: Yeah, so you're right. Free is kind of a misnomer. It's not free. It's as free as the Gmail app. You can download a Gmail app on your phone, and it doesn't do anything until somebody creates an email address for you and runs a server in the background to, you know, put email in and out of your inbox, right? That's what we're doing with CoTAK. It costs money to do that, but it's free for users in the sense. We think that, like I say, free is a major component to this because agencies typically don't adopt technology because of cost. As far as the TAP community across the country within public safety, I just think it's new. I think we're one of the first and I think we're definitely not one of the last and we're creating a model that I think is repeatable state to state. Texas has made major gains and there's a handful of other states that are very interested in doing what we're doing. We probably get an email about once a week from a from a state asking us if they could get the stuff we've built that is CoTAK for their state.

[6:10] Kevin Sofen: Are there any use cases or small wins with that you can think of within CoTAK about how it led to a more efficient response or it led to a better outcome for an operation or it led to you know saving a life or preventing something back from happening? Any top of mind use cases has been in Colorado that TAK has played an influential role in?

[6:31] Ben Miller: Oh, man, the pressure for memory recall. Let's see. The first one I think about is, I think it's been a couple of years now, but we had TAK on board our fire detection aircraft. So think of like a big infrared camera on an airplane. And they're watching a fire when they're looking down at the ground. And in the TAK system, they saw the location of some fire engines. and those fire engines were headed down the road towards the fire, it made a ton of sense to the operator up in the sky looking down like, why on earth would you be going that direction? But on the ground, given the terrain, those engines didn't know they were heading towards the fire. And so that aircraft was able to contact them and say, hey, you don't want to go around the next corner. And so they got them to turn around and go back the other way. Pretty logical, right? Pretty simple. Yeah, just takes a whole bunch of smart people in the background to make all that work.

[7:25] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. And then expand upon that a little bit in terms of just like, one of the challenges is there's so much talked about data is the new gold, and we need data for this, data for that. But data overload and the amount of cognition that our brain can take is only so much. We're not fully functioning AI systems. Actually, we are, but in our own brain way. But in the sense that our brains can only handle so much. How would you approach synthesizing information in a way to where it's actually useful and not just data overload with bells whistles everywhere but actually just this is green red you know go don't go type thing

[7:59] Ben Miller: no that's absolutely it my background's in uncrewed aircraft systems or drones and we got to this very quickly once we learned how to downlink a video to a network and give it to other people we got to that point of data saturation i've been on search and rescue missions watching a tv screen for hours and hours and hours and i'm pretty sure at the end of that day i was watching pink elephants run across the screen that weren't there. Data saturation is a critical thing. One of the ways that we approach that with a CoTAK system is the development of a tool called Channels. And we allow the user to group data into channels. And just like on a radio, you can turn those channels on and off. Each channel has a data set. Data sets can be groups of people, fire perimeters, lightning, anything you can come up with from a date, like I might need this data in the field. But to your point on the saturation piece, you can turn it off and on. I can have three channels out of my 10 on at once or seven or one, it doesn't matter. Or I could have 100 channels. There's really limitless in that perspective, but we give the user the opportunity to manage that saturation reality.

[9:09] Kevin Sofen: What are you most excited about in the next six to 24 months within the TAK development, kind of from where we're at now and ultimately what TAK will continue

[9:18] Ben Miller: That's easy. That's saving lives. I think within short order, we'll have that specific case where someone calls up and wants to share a story of how they went home that day because of CoTAK. I think we're very close to that event. It gives me chills to talk about. It's the thing that motivates us to do what we do. And I don't think we're very far away from that day where somebody calls up and says, Hey, you don't know me, but I use CoTAK. And I'm not dead today because somebody knew where I was at.

[9:46] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Well said. I just gave me the chills there a bit too in terms, again, this is why we're here. This is what we're doing. One of my final questions is, when thinking of, I asked you earlier about some of the obstacles, but with people that are maybe in the public safety space. particularly in fire, a little bit in police, it's kind of ingrained in tradition and ingrained in this is the way we've always done it. But tradition is different than culture. I do think that culture is continuing to evolve and be very innovative, progressive, open to embracing stuff that's gonna make us better, faster, stronger, smarter. What would you say to people that are kind of like, oh, I have what we have, we're good with whiteboards and dog tags, I don't need anything more. Or someone that's just kind of maybe on the fence, like what would your message be to individuals and departments that are kind of either naysayers or on the fence?

[10:33] Ben Miller: Man, two things. It's hard, then it's worth it. Change and adoption are not easy. You're not gonna just adopt a new technology because you made the conscious decision to question culture or tradition. You have to do that, but even when you do that, there's still a lot to do to make change happen. But I would say it's worth it's absolutely worth it. Technologies like TAK and real-time location services are that next generation of public personal protective equipment. It's PPE. My boss said that to me one day. He's like, oh, this is easy. This is PPE. And I was like, chief, you're exactly right. And we've carried that message forward since then. TAK is the software of PPE.

[11:16] Kevin Sofen: It is. You wouldn't go into a fire without wearing your PPE.

[11:19] Ben Miller: That's correct. We're actually launching CoTAK technically live today. We've been onboarding agencies now for the last little while but we're officially live today across the state of Colorado. There's a video that you can find at cotak.gov. And in there, one of our early users is interviewed and they basically say as much. If we leave the firehouse, we turn TAK on.

[11:40] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and that's a great context and just continue to integrate within the fabric of how we operate in terms of whether it's like you're loading up the truck with equipment, this is just a digital software that's surviving and protecting you in the back end.

[11:53] Ben Miller: I still remember I started my law enforcement career in 2000 and the agency I worked for at the time, there were still sheriff's deputies that weren't wearing their vest to work. And to think back on that's incredible. Who would not wear a ballistic vest to a law enforcement job? But at that time, that adoption case, it finally took somebody saying, no, the new policy is you will wear it or you won't work here anymore. And I think adoption takes bold moves like that from a leadership perspective. It's organizations like ours that are producing the data that will help support those decisions. But in the very near future, within the next few years, I think agency leadership across the country in all aspects of public safety needs to take that bold step and say, guess what we're doing? It's going to suck for a little bit, but it's the right thing to do.

[12:44] Kevin Sofen: Well, I'll be remiss not to have a shout out for Coy Kessler for initially introducing us. Love you, Coy. you guys are doing amazing work with CoTAK and the Center of Excellence and continue to lead the way. If anyone, if people wanted to get in touch or find out more about you and CoTAK, what's the best way to do that?

[12:59] Ben Miller: So we've got a website that's just generally about the Center of Excellence called toefiretech.org. We're reworking that one. But if you want to go see the Cadillac, I guess, version of what we're doing right now, go to cotak.gov. You can find training materials on TAK even if you're not an agency within the state of Colorado that we think are beneficial to everybody, and there's links on that website of how to get ahold of us.

[13:21] Kevin Sofen: Ben, thank you so much for doing that. I told you 10 minutes, we're at 13, you gotta catch a plane soon, so thank you very much for your time.

[13:26] Ben Miller: Thanks a bunch, that was awesome.

[13:28] Kevin Sofen: Cool, right on. Thanks for listening today. Make sure to join us at CivTAK 2025, November four through six in Washington, D.C. CivTAK is where public safety professionals and industry leaders come together to collaborate, innovate, and advance TAK integration. This is your ecosystem for real-world solutions and shared mission success. See the website in show notes and we hope to see you there. TAK is the way.