Smart Firefighting Podcast

Episode 284: Using TAK to Navigate Crisis Zones with Free Burma Rangers with Miles Vining

Published

Guests: Miles Vining

Topics: TAK & Mapping

Episode notes

How can open-source tools make a real difference when traditional systems are failing?

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 is TAK filling a critical gap in humanitarian coordination?

How Free Burma Rangers are rebuilding maps from scratch using TAK and local knowledge

Why verified, time-stamped information matters more than ever

Hear from Miles Vining from Free Burma Rangers , a conflict relief organization working in some of the most remote and dangerous regions of Burma and beyond.

Miles breaks down how TAK is being used in the field—not just for coordination and logistics, but for mapping areas that don’t even exist on public maps and documenting war crimes with precision. From carrying casualties out of the jungle in handmade stretchers to overlaying satellite imagery in unmapped regions, Miles shares what it really looks like to operate in places most people never see.

The conversation brings attention to the gaps in humanitarian aid, the role of open-source tools like TAK, and the need for more medical and volunteer support in conflict zones.

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. 0:39 Live at CivTAK with Miles Vining
  3. 1:11 What Free Burma Rangers is and why it exists
  4. 3:17 How TAK fits the mission in remote, austere terrain
  5. 5:26 Places that don't exist on Google Maps
  6. 5:59 Documenting abuses with verified, time-stamped data
  7. 7:12 Rebuilding maps from local knowledge
  8. 10:24 Backlash from the Burmese military
  9. 12:52 What's next: Karenni, Sudan and other crises
  10. 15:10 Advice for humanitarian groups exploring TAK
  11. 18:21 How to support FBR: medical volunteers
  12. 20:22 Wrap

Questions answered in this episode

What is Free Burma Rangers and what does it do?

Miles Vining says Free Burma Rangers is a conflict relief organization registered as a 501c NGO that works primarily in Burma, but also in Iraq, Syria, Tajikistan, and Ukraine. The group operates in humanitarian gaps where larger relief organizations cannot reach, providing medical treatment at casualty collection points, delivering supplies to internally displaced persons whose villages have been destroyed, and reporting on civilian casualties and atrocities.

Hear it at 1:16

How does Free Burma Rangers use TAK in remote conflict zones?

Miles Vining explains TAK allows the team to coordinate logistics and casualties over satellite and radio communications using offline imagery in areas reachable only on foot or motorcycle. TAK helps them track casualties from initial injury through evacuation, provides mapping for areas that do not exist on Google Maps, and enables war crimes documentation by attaching timestamped and geo-rectified photos and drone imagery that can be submitted to organizations like the UN.

Hear it at 3:29

Why do existing maps fail in the regions where Free Burma Rangers operates?

Maps from the Myanmar government are 20 years old and use Burmese naming conventions, but the Karen people who live in border regions have completely different names for their own villages. Miles Vining says if you ask for a town by its Burmese name, local Karen will not recognize it even if you are standing in that town. Villages have also relocated after offensives, so place names on old maps no longer match reality.

Hear it at 7:35

What documentation challenge does TAK help solve for atrocities in Burma?

Miles Vining says the Burmese army often gets away with war crimes like wiping out villages, rape, and torture because events happen in remote border regions where documentation is difficult. With TAK he can fly a drone, capture overhead imagery of airstrikes, attach pictures that are timestamped and geo-rectified, and submit that robust evidence to bodies like the UN office in Bangkok, which matters in an era when AI can fake voices and pictures.

Hear it at 3:29

What is the main difference between threats faced overseas versus in the US?

Miles Vining says in the US a fire or SWAT threat is time limited, but overseas in conflict zones like Ukraine or Burma the threat is omnipresent and 24-7. A Russian cruise missile or proximity to a front line is a constant consideration for logistics and personnel safety, not a 10 hour incident.

Hear it at 15:35

Transcript

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

Ep 284 transcript

Using TAK to Navigate Crisis Zones with Free Burma Rangers with Miles Vining

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Miles Vining

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 4 of our CivTAK 2025 mini-series, recorded on the floor from CivTAK 2024. Joining me today is Miles Vining from Free Burma Rangers. He is on the front lines of the humanitarian relief and conflict zones, bringing TAK into the heart of these efforts. From remote mountain trails into Burma to satellite linked operations, Miles shares how his team is using TAK to coordinate, document, and respond to the world's most pressing crises. Get ready for a deep dive at how technology is transforming the field of humanitarian aid. Live again here is CivTAK alongside Miles Vining. Miles, how you doing?

[0:43] Miles Vining: I'm good. Thank you for helping putting this on.

[0:45] Kevin Sofen: Hey, yeah, man. Happy CivTAK. How's CivTAK treating you?

[0:47] Miles Vining: It's pretty cool getting to see all the different vendors, talking to people in person, listening to people up on the stage. But I think the real value is just networking and talking to people offline or spawning an idea somewhere and then taking it off to somewhere and trying to develop it more.

[1:00] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I mean a lot of these people I'm running into, I feel like I've seen just like little avatars and little things on Slack and Discord, so it is nice to know that there is a person behind the screen.

[1:09] Miles Vining: Yeah.

[1:10] Kevin Sofen: Absolutely. Yeah, so tell me about Free Burma Rangers. What is it? Why does it exist? And what's the mission?

[1:16] Miles Vining: Yeah, Free Burma Rangers is a 501c registered NGO in the United States. We're also registered in Thailand and in Iraq, and we are a conflict relief organization that works primarily in Burma, but also in Iraq, Syria, Tajikistan, and Ukraine. Primarily, we've always been focused in Burma, founded by the current founder had David Eubank in 1996 or so, doing a major Burmese army offensive that forced a lot of Karen into refugee status in Thailand. And it was founded on the premise of being a conflict relief group that's working in that humanitarian gap where some of the larger relief groups can't access, can't get to or can't be effective for various other reasons and being able to primarily provide aid in forms of medical treatment and that's, you know, first-tier, second-tier casualty collection points, being able to bring in surgeons, nurses, medics to areas of the frontline in Burma doing the ongoing almost 80-year civil war where there aren't any other international aid organizations or it's very hard to get to. Secondly, to address the needs of IDPs, internally displaced persons, and to be able to provide a logistics train of much needed supplies and equipment for people whose entire villages have sometimes been wiped out, often by the oncoming Burmese army and a lot of different offenses throughout Karen, Kareni, Shan, and Kachin states, also in Rakhine and Arakan state somewhat. And then third, to report on the situation there and to get the news out, we do this by the way of on our website, we see a various situation and field reports talk about what's going on, especially in regards to civilian casualties and what's happening in country. But then also by providing avenues for journalists and other reporters to come in and to help out and to see what's going on the ground themselves and also getting news out to these independent outlets that can't make it in themselves personally.

[3:13] Kevin Sofen: I mean, kudos to you and the organization doing really incredible, selfless work, so thank you. And as you were talking, obviously being here at the TAK, CivTAK event, I was curious in terms of how is TAK a piece of the puzzle? How is it the tool that you are using to execute your mission?

[3:29] Miles Vining: Yeah, so I brought TAK in to FBR a little while back. It hasn't reached full adoption, I would say. There's still a lot of stumbling blocks that need to be figured out, as is the case with a lot of the organizations here. But I was, it's, TAK is a fascinating aspect of both austere remote humanitarian relief work in general, in particular with Free Burma Rangers in the areas in Burma that we work in. Because we work in remote areas where in the rainy season sometimes the only place to get somewhere is on foot, and the dry season sometimes the only way mode of transportation is a motorcycle, or you're going up and down a mountain with a load on your back, you're crossing rivers, going you know sometimes people use elephants to get places these days but you know it is the definition of remote and austere so TAK is amazing as an amazing tool to use in that environment because we're talking about you being able to use offline imagery we're talking about coordinating disparate elements over satellite communications over radio communications you know your only internet access is Starlink or a SATCOM connection with an IP address so being able to, you need to be able to coordinate supplies and logistics and casualties over all these modes of communication and transportation, I mean from point of injury, you know, carrying somebody out in what's called a bambulence. So that's literally a cloth wrapped around a bamboo stick or a bamboo tree that two people carry on, and that's your aid and litter team moving out of the jungle, being able to coordinate that casualty out all the way to further higher echelons of care, whether that be in other parts of the province where you're going over a motorcycle, you're using, you know, even an elephant sometimes for that. So TAK is great for offline imagery and for coordinating that kind of thing. And also in terms of being able to provide a mapping service for the Cren and the Kareni that we work with, these places don't exist on Google Maps. There isn't a Google Map, you know, Hamlet for the places that we are, and these are Hamlets that are 500 or 1,000 people or less. They are not mapped in the Western hemisphere. They're mapped locally, but they don't exist on a lot of the services that are publicly available. So you have to create and make your own mapping a lot of times. And that brings a whole other layer of information dynamics that goes on there. And then also, from what I'm really passionate about is things like war crimes and atrocity documentation. Because a lot of times, the Burmese army or the Tatmadaw will get away with wiping out entire villages, will get away with rape, torture, murder, will get away with using porters as abducting people and using them as porters for the army. And they will get away with it because nobody's able to document and to properly talk about what they are doing because they happen in these border regions that are in the middle of nowhere in austere locations. And it's a matter of word of, you know, the Karens say that this happened to us and the Burmese deny it. Well, with TAK, I'm able to fly a drone. I'm able to take overhead imagery of an airstrike. I'm able to take pictures on the ground, attach it, have it be timestamped and geo-rectified, and then submit that up. We've submitted stuff that way to the UN office in Bangkok, for example, and it adds a much more robust layer of documentation. I mean, nowadays in the days of AI, where you can fake anything, you can fake a voice, you can fake a picture, you can do all sorts of things, having that ability to have not only the metadata, but also the geo-rectified and timestamp data is extremely important for that aspect. So that's what's really passionate about it.

[7:12] Kevin Sofen: So there's two things I wanted to talk, what you just mentioned. One, the creating your own maps and the other is like creating the information and then sharing it and using it as a form of action. Tell me more about, for these areas that didn't have maps. Correct. You talked about, are you creating maps and then ultimately inputting that into TAK so you can then use it, or are you kind of relying on latitude, longitude, instant capacity, like in populating the map experience. Tell me more about that.

[7:35] Miles Vining: Yeah, absolutely. And this is something I'm really passionate about too. So there is, we work, the best maps are something from the Burmese survey department or the Myanmar survey department or mapping department. This is for an element of the Burmese government. However, these maps are not updated and they're old. They're like 20 years old in some cases. They're paper maps and we have PDF versions. So through TAK, we can create a geo-PDF and place the map onto the land. That works well for terrain features and contour lines, but for village names, this is coming from the Burmese government, but we're working in border regions in Karen state. These are the Karen people who are totally different from the Burmese. So the names of their hamlets and villages are different from the names on the maps there. In addition, the regions have faced a lot of relocation, you know, from various offenses that have happened over the years. So you will actually have, well, the first problem is that you have a Burmese convention of naming villages and hamlets that the Karen don't use. So you can go into these areas and say, I'm looking for this particular name, this particular town, and the Karen will look at you blankly and they say, I've never heard that town in my life. Meanwhile, you're in that town. It's because the Karen have their own name for it, right? So the Karen use that name. So if you're trying to move around, if you're trying to understand the area, especially for analysts and outside people trying to understand, okay, who is who and where is where on the ground, if you do that with Burmese names, you are quickly gonna find yourself talking to people who don't know what you're talking about. So that's the first problem that, yeah, the maps, that existing maps aren't accurate. Meanwhile, on the other side, we have organizations such as various Karen organizations that do have lists, more updated lists of these Hamlet names, but they exist in something like a GPX format. So with TAK, I can do something like geo-rectify maps, put them into TAK, and then take the GPX names from a Korean human rights group, for example, KHRG, and bring that into TAK and now overlay them together and now correlate the two. So now, Karen are able to look at the map and have an accurate naming convention for that. You also have weird things going on where you have villages that now no longer exist in one place and have actually been relocated to another place because you have the village that everybody moved because the Burmese came in and then burnt everything. So the village simply took up residence somewhere else where they're able to settle down. So you have village names that are new in one place old enough place for example and then satellite imagery huge deal I mean you talk to the Karen know their area like the back of their hand, and they can run around the mountains all over, but they've never often seen their own areas from the sky. So introducing something like satellite imagery is an amazing game changer for the Karen, and being able to say, okay, this is what we look like from the air, and this is how we look like now, and how I can move around. So that's something that makes me really passionate when it comes to mapping in these areas.

[10:24] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, it's just a practical way of taking all these different tools, overlaying them, and deploying it in a way, Because I just, as you can imagine, as you see it's not, it's constantly changing for better or for worse through the application. So then the other thing that was interesting as you were talking was the creating and documenting the information of something happening and then putting that into a public domain to allow people to see it. To me that it's very noble and that you're doing that, but it also seems like it's somewhat risky. I can imagine that maybe kind of the opposing side is not very thrilled that the information getting out. Tell me about kind of how that data is ultimately shared, what that impact is like to ultimately help the people that are being impacted, but then also is there has there been any sort of negative backlash from some of the other parties about that information getting out?

[11:12] Miles Vining: Yeah, I mean the Burmese military hates us, the Burmese government hates us, they don't like us operating there because we're telling the truth about what's happening on the ground. So yeah, other parties not liking what we're doing, hundred percent. They don't, the Burmese do not like us. And to be fair, we are we are not a neutral party in this conflict. We side with the oppressed. Our motto is free the oppressed. And we side with the Karen, Kachin, Karenni, Sean ethnic groups that are under oppression from the government. We are neutral towards the Burmese. We don't actively take up arms against the Burmese. We'll treat Burmese casualties. And our motto is love each other. So we want to help everybody that we can. And we want to be on, we want the conflict to work out for the better. But in the meantime, you have the top model doing these terrible atrocities all over the place and we're not just gonna stand by and let that happen, we're gonna talk about it. So in terms of documenting, so something I was able to accomplish, I mean I look at this as my tack use there, but taking a drone strike and I was able to fly a drone overhead, take overhead imagery in the field and be able to send that to the UNHCR offices in Bangkok and have an overhead imagery, real time, almost real time, near real time imagery of the event and what happened. Now, what became of it, I mean, unfortunately we're talking about the world's longest forgotten civil war. Not many people care about what happens in Burma. It's not a place on the news. There's no oil. The US doesn't have many interests in Burma. Thailand is even split on what side of the conflict they want to support sometimes. It's a very hard conflict to affect and affect a difference in, you know, with the work that we do, but that's not going to stop us from trying to help and trying to make a difference. So I think that answers that question in a myriad of different

[12:52] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, it does. And so it is now, I guess, officially October, right? Yeah, it's October 2nd now, 2024. What's on your horizon agenda? Free Burma Rangers related or anything else related for the next 6, 12, 24 months?

[13:08] Miles Vining: Well, right now we're supporting a lot in Kareni. We've been doing that for the past two or three years. And a lot of the current Burmese offenses in Kareni have, you know, really pulverized a lot of the population and a lot of the villages there. So a lot of our support is going towards Corinne, where that's our main focus in Burma right now. There was recently a Sky News team that has a documentary out about some of the hospitals there. And that Sky News team has an amazing series that talks about it. For me, what I would love to see is a proliferation of TAK across these spaces, especially, you know, the causes that I'm really passionate about, international relief, humanitarian relief. And I just see a tremendous value in that space. And I would love to see more of a proliferation of TAK in those spaces and be able to affect and create better change and create more effective reporting and documentation and more effective coordination throughout all the people and spaces and organizations in there. Work with FBR part-time, so there's other stuff I do in this space, but being able to help other partners in the area. I think a rising wave, what is it, a rising wave raises all ships, what is that called?

[14:16] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, no, that's it.

[14:17] Miles Vining: Yeah. So being able to do that, I see a tremendous potential for TAK in these areas, especially when it comes to remote, austere locations and being able to work and affect populations in there. I mean, right now you have the greatest humanitarian crisis happening in Sudan that nobody's talking about. Nobody's talking about Burma either, but I mean, everyone's focused, you know, such headline cases as in Gaza or in Israel, for example. But we've also had literally millions displaced in Sudan and possibly Starlink might be cutting and office services there and in Burma. So talk about, I mean, Burma's a hard case. Sudan is 10 times worse, sheerly by numbers alone, the amount of IDPs and atrocities that are happening there. And guess what, cellular connection isn't great there, and that's a place for TAK to make a difference, I believe, by the various forces that can use it on the ground for, in a way, for good, so.

[15:10] Kevin Sofen: So any, I guess, final question would be, for some other groups that are exploring or interested in trying to use TAK in different ways for humanitarian disaster relief, whether they don't really know where to start or kind of, again, it kind of seems like this, how would I even integrate this operations? What would you say to organizations that maybe haven't thought about it or are kind of on the fence about using TAK as a tool to support their humanitarian disaster relief efforts?

[15:35] Miles Vining: I think I really liked what was said yesterday is how do you answer, I think it was Chief or Captain Lechlifter from Corona Fire, and you made a very good point of saying, I need to solve a very basic problem. How do I do that? And if you look at TAK, start with the small problems. Accountability of personnel and assets. How do I do that, right? What are the current options on the market and does TAK offer an alternative? That does work. So tracking personnel and assets, whether it's a garment in reach, you know. And what I would, the biggest thing I would offer is in for the complexity of working overseas, add the invisible layer of complexity that is added is a lot of the fact of dealing with parties and people that don't want you there and that are very dangerous themselves. So dealing with an enemy force, for example, whether in Ukraine, it's dealing with the Russian front line or whether in Burma, it's dealing with the top model. You don't have that in the US. You may have specific threats. A fire station might be dealing with a specific fire and that, but that fire is, you know, in house or a SWAT team may be dealing with, you know, a combatant that's inside of the house. You know, it's a very specific limited threat and that threat can end. But overseas, that threat is omnipresent and ever-present. You know, a Russian cruise missile crashing into your apartment is a 24-7 threat, not a 10-hour fire or a 10-hour, you know, besieged suspect in the US, for example. So TAK allows you that single plane of glass for you to work with that 24-7 threat in addition to working your logistics and to work in your SIGX happening all around you, and to work in your personnel and asset management and tracking. So it's another dimension that doesn't exist among current US users. It exists among US DoD users, but this is a segment that has not been introduced to TAK in a lot of ways, and that solves, almost solves a lot of things for that threat. Well, if you wanna work your logistics and your assets, and you wanna establish that, well, we can't move, you know, within 10 clicks or 20 clicks of the Russian front line of the forward line of troops. Well, where is that forward line of troops? And how accurate is that data? You don't need, you are not affecting that forward line of troops. You are not supplying or fighting there, but you need to know that I need to stay out of grad range, out of Oregon, out of smurch range of that line if I wanna be effective in the field, if that's one of your threat considerations and planning considerations. So how do you do that in real time? So that's, that's the way I look at it. I'm from that, this is that invisible third factor, almost third factor, invisible factor that you don't have in the U.S., so.

[18:21] Kevin Sofen: Miles, I feel like this conversation can go on for hours. I'm really intrigued and impressed, saying just grateful for the work that you're doing and excited to continue to see where all things free Burma Rangers and free, FBR, right? Yeah, FBR is doing, and just kudos and respect to your organization and keep up the great work.

[18:37] Miles Vining: Well, thank you very much for giving a platform talk about FBR and talk about the plight of the people of Burma it's something that's very important to all of us and very neglected in this space today.

[18:46] Kevin Sofen: If people want to learn more what's the best way to do that?

[18:48] Miles Vining: We have our organization FreeBurmaRangers.org everything's done we have a YouTube channel we have an Instagram channel you know we got all the social media outlets out there's ways to volunteer there's ways to help medics any medical personnel are we're always looking and always in need of medical personnel of skilled experienced personnel that want to be able to help and make a difference. It's really the sort of like if you're, you don't need to be a trauma surgeon or a brain surgeon or an 18 delta medic to really make a difference. I mean, you can be a radiological tech. I mean, people need x-rays in Burma too. You need to know like what's going on with that bone underneath the surface. You need a radiological tech to figure that out. A dentist. I mean, for example, we bring in one of our dentists, a guy named Shannon Allison, he comes into a lot of our conflict zones. I mean, why would you need a dentist compared to an 18 delta? don't you need to take that bullet out of that guy's stomach or whatever? It's like, yeah, well, you ever suffered from a toothache? You ever had a, yeah, it's pretty terrible. It's pretty, you cannot work when you have a terrible toothache. Yeah, exactly. You need a guy to take that tooth out of you, man. So don't think that, if you have a medical skillset, don't think that it might not be needed because there's always a need for anything medical. and that's the biggest need at all times, so.

[20:02] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, well Seth, my wife is a speech therapist. I don't know if she's gonna be really willing to jump into Burma quite yet, but at the same time, there's different aspects of therapy in all the different realms of healthcare that are needed. It's more so than just staying alive. It's sustaining a fruitful life, which is more than just staying alive.

[20:21] Miles Vining: No, absolutely.

[20:22] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, well Miles, keep up the good work. I'm stoked to keep in touch, and we'll talk soon.

[20:26] Miles Vining: Yeah, thank you as well, you too.

[20:28] Kevin Sofen: See you. Cool. Thanks for listening today. Make sure to join us at CivTAK 2025, November 4-6 in Washington DC. CivTAK is where public safety professionals, 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.