Firefighting with Drone Assistance: User Needs and Design Considerations for Thailand

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  1. In Thailand, fires significantly impact the environment, human health, and the economy, particularly air pollution caused by forest fires (e.g., PM2.5) and the release of harmful gases from industrial fires.
  2. Firefighting methods commonly used in Thailand are outdated, with insufficient integration of technology and data-driven systems.
  3. Although drones have shown potential in firefighting tasks, their use faces limitations in terms of technology, resources, and operations, including budget constraints, equipment mismatches, and inadequate training for operators.
  4. In Global South countries, there is a disconnect in equipment procurement and operational standards, making it difficult for firefighting teams to coordinate and share resources, while also facing legal and bureaucratic restrictions.

• Significance:

  1. The long-term environmental damage and socioeconomic costs of fires strain Thailand's limited resources, particularly in remote areas.
  2. Drones can provide real-time information from disaster sites, enhancing situational awareness and resource allocation, with the potential to address many shortcomings of existing firefighting methods.
  3. In firefighting tasks requiring efficient decision-making and rapid response, drones could serve as a critical technological support.

• Research Motivation and Related Work: By analyzing the current applications of drones in firefighting and incorporating research methods from Human-Drone Interaction and Human-Computer Interaction for Development (HCI4D), the authors identified the potential of drones to improve situational awareness, decision support, and team collaboration. However, there is insufficient exploration of their practical application in resource-constrained environments in the Global South. This study aims to fill this research gap.

Proposed Solution

• Proposed Methods or Solutions:

  1. User Needs Interviews: Conduct interviews with 15 professional firefighters in Thailand to understand their needs, usage challenges, and future expectations for drones.
  2. Design Considerations Based on User Feedback: Propose specific design standards to improve the human-drone interaction experience, particularly tailored to Thailand's resource-constrained environment.
  3. Interdisciplinary Analysis: Combine human-computer interaction technologies with drone optimization to develop practical design and policy recommendations.

• Innovative Aspects:

  1. Explore design drivers specific to Thailand's firefighting scenarios (e.g., forest fires and industrial disasters) from a user experience perspective.
  2. Integrate Thailand's socioeconomic characteristics (limited resources, uneven regional development, regulatory constraints) with drone design.
  3. Propose four core considerations for drone design, including multifunctionality and resource sharing, adaptive communication systems, and the integration of human and machine data processing.

• Implementation Steps and Key Technologies:

  1. Data Collection: Gather technical requirements and operational feedback from firefighting tasks through remote phone or video interviews.
  2. Interview Analysis: Use a hybrid coding analysis method to categorize interview content into six themes: situational assessment, task characteristics, communication strategies, interaction methods and applications, user cognitive needs, and governance.
  3. Design Guidelines: Propose solutions based on drone operation, communication adaptability, knowledge integration, and multi-task support.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Outcomes:

  1. Identified six core themes covering the needs and challenges of using drones in firefighting tasks.
  2. Developed design considerations based on drone operation, adaptive communication, and task sharing, along with corresponding usage guidelines.
  3. Highlighted four key factors influencing the deployment of drones in first-response scenarios in the Global South, including promoting localized adaptability, simplifying equipment usage, aligning organizational and user needs, and optimizing policies.

• Advantages Over Existing Solutions:

  1. By conducting in-depth user interviews and incorporating Thailand's specific sociocultural context, the study offers greater practical applicability compared to research conducted in high-income countries.
  2. Proposed solutions integrate digital data with human knowledge, addressing issues such as insufficient mapping information and on-site operational complexities.
  3. The study incorporates design principles emphasizing equity, resource sharing, and cost efficiency, promoting the effective use of drones in resource-limited environments.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  1. The interviews revealed the strong potential of drones to improve personnel resource allocation, task monitoring, and on-site situational awareness.
  2. The proposed design considerations received significant user support, including demands for improved ease of use, language support, and optimized communication channels.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  1. Limitations: The sample size was small, representing only a portion of Thai firefighters' perspectives; the study did not include long-term data validation of drones integrated with other intelligent systems.
  2. Future Directions: Conduct in-depth field observations and cross-national comparisons; explore multi-modal interaction technologies; promote comprehensive integration of drones from policy and adoption perspectives.

The authors' research provides valuable guidance for the application of drone technology in firefighting tasks within resource-constrained environments, while offering practical recommendations for further research and design improvements.