Sydney

A Case Study, describing a pro forma solution of coping wildfires

PROBLEM
Fire-fighting systems based on existing technologies are not able to satisfactorily cope with the growing problems of containing wildfires and other large and difficult fires. And no possible breakthrough is foreseen with the “old” technologies.
The market lacks a sufficiently efficient, oprative, accurate, safe, economically reasonable airborne fire-fighting systems, able to cope with ever increasing threat of wildfires.

SOLUTION
PulsTECH’s Fire Suppression Technology is virtually the only truly scalable, innovative solution for suppressing landscape fires (as well as all other types of fires).

CASE STUDY – Australian Bushfires, Solution for Greater Sydney Region

The Case, description of conditions
Forest & bush area (wildland) surrounding Sydney agglomeration – ca 20,000m2;
As average annually burning ca 5% of it, and up to 20% in record years;
The length of the contact line between residential areas and wildlands is about 7000km;
The ca 500m wide strip (from the buildings) is considered a so-called wildland-urban interface (WUI) with a total area of ca 3500km2;
The primary goal of fire-fighting is to prevent the fire from spreading to the WUI area and (if it still spreads) to extinguish the fire there (before it spreads to the buildings);
In the case of fires, at extraordinary weather conditions (strong wind from the conductive direction, drought), up to 30% of fires can spread to WUI areas;
Thus, the expected maximum WUI area potentially exposed to fire is up to 6% of its total extent, i.e. about 200km2;
Let’s assume (somewhat arbitrarily) that up to 50% of (this yearly volume of) fires can fall to just 1 month, and that the intensity (of fires) on peak days is 2x higher than the average for that month.

Rationale & Calculations
Based on these assumptions, the required capacity of fire protection systems can be calculated.
The system should be able (on peak days) to withstand (to extinguish) fire at up to 6-7 square kilometers.
We assume (again, somewhat arbitrarily) that in reality it is necessary to extinguish the area, which represents about 10% of the area of the fire, i.e. ca 60-70ha or 0,6-0,7mio sq.m.
According to calculations, in mor or less ideal conditions, for that there will be needed to spend about 300-350T of agent.
In more realistic (lively) conditions, we assume, this amount will be about 2 times higher – ca 600-700T or 6000-7000 (lets take 6000) containers of 100kg each.
6000 conteiners is possible to deliver with 500 trips of 4-drone units. Assuming that one unit makes an average of 1-2 (1.5) trips per hour, and taking for effective (maximal) operating time – 20 hours a day, we find that an effective fire safety system for the area should consist of at least 17 (lets take 20) drone units.

Budget; Costs of setting up and of operating such a system:
Purchase of systems – 30MEUR; (assuming a systems life span is 10 years, then expected depreciation + maintenance costs are ca 5MEUR per year);
Staff training, salaries, other staff costs – estimated up to 5MEUR/y;
Warehousing (up to 1 month stock of containers), logistics, system maintenance – 2MEUR/y;
Alltogether – annual fixed costs – ca 12MEUR;
The expected operating cost of direct fire-fighting (using the drone systems) – 1-1,5eur per sq.m. (directly extinguished).

Conclusions
Cost of other fire-fighting systems (the cost of maintaining and the cost of using them) can be reduced al least by about 2x – overall, the cost of fire fighting can be reduced by up to a third.
NSW fire-fighting services budget 2019/20 – 1,3BnA$ (ca 770MEUR)
NSW fire services capital expenditures 2019/20 – 150MioAUD (ca 90MEUR)
https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/12/10/nsw-firefighting-budget-fact-check/
Greater Sydney – over 60% of NSW population, economy, infrastructure etc.

Assessed reduction of damages/losses – at least 50% ((2019 fire damage in Australia estimated at about 2BnAUD; Sydney region estimated at up to a third of that, i.e. 600-700MioAUD).
Assessed reduction of material losses – ca 200MEUR.

Assessed material benefit from introducing a new fire protection system:

• EUR 80-120Mio/y – reduction of costs to fire service;
• up to EUR 200Mio/y – assessed reduction of damages & losses (during a hazardouz year of bushfires, like the current year)

Other positive effects:

• Increase of overall security;
• Positive impact on living environment, human health.