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Utilizing multimodal high-intensity interval training for a firefighter training academy during the COVID-19 pandemic
Firefighters typically undergo a 16–24-week training academy during which they perform a variety of traditional exercise programs such as cardiovascular, resistance, and concurrent training. Because of limited facility access, some fire departments seek alternative exercise programs, such as multimodal high-intensity interval training (MM-HIIT), which essentially combines resistance and interval training. Here, the primary purpose of this study was to assess the effect of MM-HIIT on body composition and physical fitness in firefighter recruits who completed a training academy during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. A secondary purpose was to compare the effects of MM-HIIT to previous training academies that implemented traditional exercise programs. Healthy and recreationally-trained recruits (n=12) participated in 2-3 days/week of MM-HIIT for 12 weeks and had several components of body composition and physical fitness measured before and after the program. Because of COVID-19-related gym closures, all MM-HIIT sessions were performed outdoors at a fire station with minimal equipment. These data were retroactively compared to a control group (CG) that previously completed training academies with traditional exercise programs. Subjects in the MM-HIIT group significantly improved several components of body composition and fitness, including fat mass, fat-free mass, body fat percentage, aerobic capacity, and muscular endurance (p < 0.005). Moreover, there were no significant differences for any dependent variable when MM-HIIT was compared to the CG (p≥0.005). These results suggest that MM-HIIT may serve as an effective substitute for traditional concurrent training paradigms that are typically used for firefighter academies.
NFPA Distributed Energy Resources Safety Training (DERST) For Emergency Responders
The National Fire Protection Association, with support from the Department of Energy, executed a multi-year initiative to develop, enhance, and disseminate Distributed Energy Resources Safety Training (DERST) tools for U.S. emergency responders. As Distributed Energy Resources (DER)—such as solar photovoltaics, battery energy storage systems (ESS), electric vehicles (EVs), and associated infrastructure—become increasingly prevalent, the NFPA identified a critical need for up-to-date standardized, accessible, and effective safety training tailored for the fire service and related public safety professionals. The project delivered a comprehensive suite of educational resources to improve responders’ abilities to safely manage DER-related incidents. This included: • Revised Modular Training Courses: Updated classroom-based DER safety courses, now modular and accessible nationwide through fire academies and the North American Fire Training Directors (NAFTD) network. • Live Burn Testing & Research: A full-scale controlled burn of a DER-equipped residential structure provided real-world data and insights, forming the basis for updated best practices. • A Gamified Simulation Tool – Firefighters Incident Response Simulation Tool (FIRST): A first-of-its-kind, multiplayer, scenario-based simulation using the Unreal Engine 5.0 to train responders in a realistic virtual, multi-DER incident environment. • Field Familiarization Software Tools & Prop Guide: Digital DER field familiarization evolutions software guide and a prop development manual to support field-based DER training exercises, enhancing responders' hands-on familiarity with DER infrastructure and collaboration on virtual incident responses. • National Dissemination Strategy: Strategic partnerships with NAFTD, Vector Solutions, and others enabled wide-scale distribution, with over 5,000 departments accessing resources and 1,100+ departments adopting the simulator in the first seven months. Also provided a web portal for easy access to all training and simulation programs developed under this grant for the U.S. responder community. Key findings from the project—particularly from the burn test—led to paradigm shifts in fire response tactics. For example, traditional approaches to garage fires may be hazardous if DERs are present, due to explosive off gassing and thermal runaway risks. The new training emphasizes scene assessment, stand-off approaches, thermal imaging verification, and careful post-incident cooling of DER components to prevent reignition. This initiative has had a significant national impact, raising awareness, enhancing preparedness, and supporting safer DER incident response practices. Significant engagement from the media, public safety organizations, and PBS coverage has further amplified the reach and adoption of NFPA’s DER safety training, tools, and simulations.
Patient Simulators Train Emergency Caregivers
Johnson Space Center teamed up with Sarasota, Florida-based METI (now CAE Healthcare) through the STTR program to ruggedize the company’s patient simulators for training astronauts in microgravity environments. The design modifications were implemented in future patient simulators that are now used to train first responders in the US military as well as fire departments and other agencies that work in disaster zones.
A Full-Scale Fire Program to Evaluate New Furnishings and Textile Materials Developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
The plans for the present series of full-scale experimental fires were initiated at the suggestion of NASA following the presentation of a film and discussion illustrating Battelle-Columbus' recent work in fire research. That film showed bedroom-type fires carried out as a part of a program to determine the influence of the cyclic characteristics of real fires under limited ventilation on the burning and pyrolysis properties of the room furnishings. A new series of fires was suggested by NASA designed to show the performance of new fire resistant and fire retardant materials by providing comparative fire and smoldering environmental conditions. More recently, the goal for the new series of fires was written in a meeting with NASA personnel and others at Battelle on May 3 and 4, 1972. The goal was as follows: To establish the need for special materials of improved fire safety in domiciliary settings of public concern, and to assess, in a professionally acceptable manner, the potential of materials arising from the new space-age technology for this purpose. It was anticipated that some new materials arising from the space-age technology and not yet available through conventional commercial channels might provide significant improvements in fire safety if the best of the commercially available materials showed important shortcomings in this area. It was the intent of this program to assess the benefits that could accrue from the use of these new materials. Fire safety is a matter requiring the evaluation of a number of factors. For example, fire resistance and fire spread, visibility during the fire, toxicity of evolved gases, and the fire-fighting problem that is created must be evaluated before the relative hazard can be assessed. The plan of the program provided for sampling and instrumentation to evaluate these factors, consistent with the goal of technological utilization that has been specified. Arrangements were made with the Columbus Fire Department to use an existing six-story concrete building', designed and used as a fire training tower, as the site for the experimental fires. The visual evidence provided by TV and photographic coverage of the four experimental room fires showed clearly that the rooms responded very differently to a common ignition condition. In particular: (1) The Typical room, furnished from conventional retail sources, ignited easily and burned rapidly so that after 8 minutes the contents of the room were nearly destroyed. (2) The Improved room, furnished with materials selected as being among the best commercially available, showed substantial improvement over the Typical room in that there was slower fire spread. However, the relatively complete destruction of the room contents that resulted, and the large amounts of smoke, made it clear that substantial further improvements were needed. This fire was stopped after 29 minutes. (3) The Space-age room, furnished completely with new materials that were not yet commercially available, did not ignite under the common ignition condition and soon demonstrated the substantial improvement in fire resistance available for those components close to the ignition source. A second and larger ignition arrangement showed that this room can burn, but the difficulty with which this was brought about confirmed the improved fire resistance available with use of these materials. (4) The Mixed room ensemble, furnished with 'materials identical to the Typical room except for the substitution of the bed from the Space-age room, illustrated the improvement in control of fire spread available by careful placement of fire materials in the important paths of fire development of an otherwise ordinary room. The most significant hazards at early times in each fire were due to the rapid rise in heat flux and the abrupt obscuration of vision by smoke. The most consistent toxicity hazard was due to CO and its importance would depend on the ability of the occupant to survive the initial heat and smoke menace which characterized each fire room. Other gases and vapors were shown to reach hazardous levels in certain fire rooms and, again, their significance to an occupant, would relate to the times in which such hazards occurred, and probably to the synergistic nature of the hazard arising from mixtures of such gases. Fire retardant items in the room are caused to pyrolyze by the heat of burning from other items in the room and so contribute to combustible and toxic vapor accumulations, even though they may not have entered into the burning process. This effect of a mixture of combustible materials to produce burning and pyrolysis not characteristic of any one item individually we have chosen to call the "ensemble effect". Further full-scale fire trials may be expected to show the significant changes that control the burning and pyrolytic processes and in that event a programmed fire chamber should be developed to yield realistic laboratory results.
Firefighting Trainer
Firefighting trainees conduct fire control exercises using a prototype simulator known as the Emergency Management Computer Aided Training System (EMCAT). Developed by Marshall Space Flight Center (MFS) in response to a request from the Huntsville (AL) Fire Department, EMCAT enables a trainee to assume the role of fireground commander and make quick decisions on best use of his fire fighting personnel and equipment.
Modeling and Prediction of Wildfire Hazard in Southern California, Integration of Models with Imaging Spectrometry
Large urban wildfires throughout southern California have caused billions of dollars of damage and significant loss of life over the last few decades. Rapid urban growth along the wildland interface, high fuel loads and a potential increase in the frequency of large fires due to climatic change suggest that the problem will worsen in the future. Improved fire spread prediction and reduced uncertainty in assessing fire hazard would be significant, both economically and socially. Current problems in the modeling of fire spread include the role of plant community differences, spatial heterogeneity in fuels and spatio-temporal changes in fuels. In this research, we evaluated the potential of Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) and Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) data for providing improved maps of wildfire fuel properties. Analysis concentrated in two areas of Southern California, the Santa Monica Mountains and Santa Barbara Front Range. Wildfire fuel information can be divided into four basic categories: fuel type, fuel load (live green and woody biomass), fuel moisture and fuel condition (live vs senesced fuels). To map fuel type, AVIRIS data were used to map vegetation species using Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) and Binary Decision Trees. Green live biomass and canopy moisture were mapped using AVIRIS through analysis of the 980 nm liquid water absorption feature and compared to alternate measures of moisture and field measurements. Woody biomass was mapped using L and P band cross polarimetric data acquired in 1998 and 1999. Fuel condition was mapped using spectral mixture analysis to map green vegetation (green leaves), nonphotosynthetic vegetation (NPV; stems, wood and litter), shade and soil. Summaries describing the potential of hyperspectral and SAR data for fuel mapping are provided by Roberts et al. and Dennison et al. To utilize remotely sensed data to assess fire hazard, fuel-type maps were translated into standard fuel models accessible to the FARSITE fire spread simulator. The FARSITE model and BEHAVE are considered industry standards for fire behavior analysis. Anderson level fuels map, generated using a binary decision tree classifier are available for multiple dates in the Santa Monica Mountains and at least one date for Santa Barbara. Fuel maps that will fill in the areas between Santa Barbara and the Santa Monica Mountains study sites are in progress, as part of a NASA Regional Earth Science Application Center, the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center. Species-level maps, were supplied to fire managing agencies (Los Angeles County Fire, California Department of Forestry). Research results were published extensively in the refereed and non-refereed literature. Educational outreach included funding of several graduate students, undergraduate intern training and an article featured in the California Alliance for Minorities Program (CAMP) Quarterly Journal.
Los Alamos National Laboratory Floodplain Assessment for the Technical Area 72 Outdoor Live Fire Range Safety Upgrades Project
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is proposing new construction and upgrade activities in lower Sandia Canyon at Technical Area (TA) 72 at the Outdoor Live Fire Range facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The proposed upgrades are intended to improve range safety to help fulfill the mission requirements of maintaining a trained and qualified armed Protective Force.
Simulation and Analysis of Launch Teams (SALT)
A SALT effort was initiated in late 2005 with seed funding from the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance Human Factors organization. Its objectives included demonstrating human behavior and performance modeling and simulation technologies for launch team analysis, training, and evaluation. The goal of the research is to improve future NASA operations and training. The project employed an iterative approach, with the first iteration focusing on the last 70 minutes of a nominal-case Space Shuttle countdown, the second iteration focusing on aborts and launch commit criteria violations, the third iteration focusing on Ares I-X communications, and the fourth iteration focusing on Ares I-X Firing Room configurations. SALT applied new commercial off-the-shelf technologies from industry and the Department of Defense in the spaceport domain.
Marin County Wildland Fires: Examining Fuel Load and Land Cover Change to Inform Fire Prevention and Suppression Decisions in Marin County, CA
Heightened occurrence of severe wildfires in the Western United States is increasing the need to better understand regions of high potential wildfire severity and develop methodologies for identifying the best locations for fuels reduction and active wildfire suppression, especially in populated regions such as Marin County, California. Marin County, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, has had significant development in the wildland-urban interface and periods of highly wildfire-prone conditions. The NASA DEVELOP team collaborated with Fire Foundry (a Marin-based fire service workforce development program) and the Marin County Fire Department to develop models to assist with fire management. Using data from Sentinel-2A, PlanetScope, ECOSTRESS, a county-wide LiDAR mapping effort, Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+), and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), our team developed a number of input data layers for three different models to evaluate wildfire severity. One model performed a suitability analysis with weights based on scientific literature; another model utilized a U-Net Convolutional Neural Network trained on previous fires in Marin and neighboring Sonoma County to predict the difference normalized burn severity; and the third inputted data layers into the FlamMap tool that outputs risk categories. We compared model outputs and performed a weighted overlay analysis to identify specific locations where a fireline could be constructed to interrupt the progress of an active fire. These tools will assist partners in preparing for and managing active wildfire situations.
Rare Earth Elements (REE) and Critical Minerals (CM) in Middle Pennsylvanian-Age Coals and Associated Sediments in the Central Appalachian Basin, Eastern U.S.A.
The Central Appalachian Basin (CAB) of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia has a long history of coal mining and oil and gas extraction that has empowered the regional and national economies, the development of infrastructure, and a highly trained energy resources work force. As our societal demands for advanced technologies have rapidly increased in recent years, coal-related materials are viewed as an important new unconventional domestic source of critical minerals (CM) that are required for telecommunications, aerospace and transportation industries, electronics, the transition to low-carbon emissions energy production, and many consumer products. Coal-related materials encompass coal, associated sediments, coal mining waste materials, produced waters, and ash residues from coal-fired power plants. An important objective of the Evolve Central Appalachia Project (Evolve CAPP), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is to assess the quantity and distribution of CM resources in the CAB region. The rare earth elements (REE) are considered highest priority, although other important CM such as niobium, gallium, and zirconium are known to occur in the Middle Pennsylvanian-age coals and sediments. Working with coal industry partners who provided access to drill cores, coal-related sediments and waste materials, over 600 samples have been collected for laboratory analysis, and over 730 materials have been scanned using portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) equipment. The application of pXRF provides the means for real-time semiquantitative analysis of CM content at very close spacings (typically 2-3 inch intervals) along drill core and in-situ channel samples that span the roof, coal seam, and floor rock. The comparison of pXRF geochemical data with laboratory results, geologic data, and downhole spectral gamma logs can provide high resolution input to lithologic and depositional models for future CM resource evaluations. The preliminary findings show that pXRF is capable of accurately measuring low concentrations of many of the CM with a high level of confidence (Ba, Cr, Ga, K, Nb, Rb, Sr, Th, Y), whereas for others (La, Ce, Co, Mn, Nd, Ni, Sc, Ti, V) the detection limits are very high or spectral interferences increase the uncertainty. Notably, the mean abundances of Y (34 ppm), La (86 ppm), Ga (40 ppm), and V (146 ppm) in coal underclays in the CAB region are up to 7X enriched compared with the overlying coal. These values also exceed the reported concentrations in published reference materials for upper continental crustal rocks (Rudnick and Gao, 2003), North American Shale Composite (Gromet et al., 1984), and North American coal (Finkelman, 1993). The pXRF data are in part verified by laboratory results that indicate the mean Y abundance (36 ppm) is highly correlated (R2 = 0.807) with total REE (ΣREE). The correlation is even higher (R2 = 0.957) with heavy REE (ΣHREE). Applying these correlations to the pXRF data for the coal underclays, the mean estimated values for ΣREE+Y and ΣHREE+Y are 270 ppm and 58 ppm, respectively. Although these average values are not considered high, the range of Y measured by pXRF in the coal underclays extended as high as 114 ppm, which would suggest ΣREE+Y equal to 847 ppm. The mean abundances of Zr (192 ppm) and Th (21 ppm) in coal underclays are also enriched compared with the overlying coal and these results likely reflect the presence of resistant detrital heavy minerals such as monazite, xenotime, and zircon in the underclay matrix. Several of the profiled coal seams and associated wall rocks contained thin volcanic ash layers up to 4-5 inches in thickness. The extent to which these ash fall layers provided a source for CM under the paleoenvironmental conditions that resulted in coal deposits in the CAB remains to be fully studied. Continuing investigations in the Evolve CAPP study area will include laboratory determinations of mineralogic and clay compositions, and evaluations of CM geochemical mobility in the coal and coal underclays.
Forecast of Wildfire Potential Across California USA Using a Transformer
Wildfires are a major issue facing the United States, a matter further exacerbated by an ever-changing climate. In California alone, wildfires are responsible for billions of dollars in damages and take lives each year. Accurately predicting fire danger conditions allows preparation awareness before wildfires start. Transformers are a class of deep learning models designed to identify patterns in sequential datasets. In recent years, transformers have gained popularity through their impressive performance in natural language processing and other applications of signal recognition. This analysis demonstrates the ability of a transformer with a residual connection to forecast fire danger potential over the state of California. Wildland fire potential index (WFPI) maps collected from the US Geological Survey database from January 1st 2020 to December 31st 2023 were used to tune, train and evaluate the transformer. Meteorological inputs (provided by Daymet daily weather and climatological summaries), the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) (calculated from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)), and outputs from the Scott and Burgman fire behavior fuel models (to characterize maps of fuel types), were used as inputs. Our results show that a transformer can effectively emulate the US Forest Service modeled WFPI maps of California USA for four week long forecasts over the month of July, 2023, with correlations ranging from 0.85 – 0.98.
Front End Engineering Design of Linde-BASF Advanced Post-Combustion CO 2 Capture Technology at a Southern Company Natural Gas-Fired Power Plant (Final Scientific/Technical Report)
This document details the execution of Cooperative Agreement DE-FE0031847, “Front End Engineering Design of Linde-BASF Advanced Post-Combustion Carbon Dioxide (CO 2 ) Capture Technology at a Southern Company Natural Gas-Fired Power Plant” during the period of 10/1/2019 to 6/30/2022. The project was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and managed by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). Southern Company Services, Inc. (SCS) was the prime recipient and led the project team. Other members of the project team included Linde, Inc. (Linde), Linde Engineering – Dresden (LED), and BASF. The overall goal of the project was to complete a front-end engineering design (FEED) study for installing the Linde-BASF post-combustion capture (PCC) technology at an existing domestic natural gas-fired combined cycle (NGCC) power plant within Southern Company’s portfolio of assets. The CO 2 capture plant was to be of commercial scale (at least 375 MWe) and include process units for pre-conditioning of the flue gas system, the CO 2 capture plant island, storage vessels, the CO 2 compression train, and any necessary components for integration into the NGCC plant. Mississippi Power’s Plant Daniel Unit #4 was chosen as the host site for the FEED with the target of capturing 90% of CO 2 emissions from the existing combustion turbines. The information produced by the FEED was used to develop a cost estimate of +/- 15% accuracy. Capital costs, excluding financing, are estimated at approximately $\$752$ million dollars (2021). The execution of a project based on this FEED study has an estimated duration of almost five years.
Enabling real-time adaptation of machine learning models at x-ray Free Electron Laser facilities with high-speed training optimized computational hardware
The emergence of novel computational hardware is enabling a new paradigm for rapid machine learning model training. For the Department of Energy’s major research facilities, this developing technology will enable a highly adaptive approach to experimental sciences. In this manuscript we present the per-epoch and end-to-end training times for an example of a streaming diagnostic that is planned for the upcoming high-repetition rate x-ray Free Electron Laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source-II. We explore the parameter space of batch size and data parallel training across multiple Graphics Processing Units and Reconfigurable Dataflow Units. We show the landscape of training times with a goal of full model retraining in under 15 min. Although a full from scratch retraining of a model may not be required in all cases, we nevertheless present an example of the application of emerging computational hardware for adapting machine learning models to changing environments in real-time, during streaming data acquisition, at the rates expected for the data fire hoses of accelerator-based user facilities.
Predictive Assessment of the Chemical Composition of Coal Ash in Reserve at U.S. Disposal Sites
In the United States, more than 2 Gt of coal combustion residuals (i.e., coal ash) are stored in hundreds of disposal units. Recent federal regulations mandate the closure or retrofitting of most coal ash impoundments, presenting significant challenges for waste management. These regulatory pressures also present opportunities to reuse coal ash. However, the quality and quantity of discarded coal ash across the U.S. are not well known, even though this information is crucial for spurring its reuse for conventional and new material applications. This study describes a predictive model for the major element composition of coal ash in reserve at disposal sites of major U.S. coal-fired power plants. This model was constructed from coal purchase records of 705 power stations from 1973 to 2022 and was trained on coal ash composition data, showing that coal ash elemental composition is strongly associated with the source of feedstock coal. The model showed regional shifts in the major element contents of ash produced by power plants in the last 50 years, particularly for calcium and iron (expressed as %CaO and %Fe2O3), as power stations changed their source of coal over this time frame. Our approach enables an estimation of chemical composition for ash stored in waste impoundments at individual power stations. Such information can help to delineate the regional market resource potential of supplementary cements for concrete and other material innovations that would utilize coal ash harvested from disposal sites across the U.S.