What Changes Are In Store Today?

Do you wonder what technological advances will come down the line in the next five, ten, or fifteen years that will change the way we do business? I never thought I’d see computers being essential for my job when I started years ago, nor did we ever imagine some of the other things (like search-cams, thermal imagers, and that kind of stuff) that are part of our everyday existence. Here’s a link to an article on an item I am hearing more and more about each day: a firefighting “grenade”. Who knows where something like this could take us? Fast response units in cars or motorcycles that could get there first and make a knock-down before the bigger units come in and mop up? The ultimate elimination or re-engineering of the fire engine as we know it now? What problem, if we could solve it today, would make our job much easier?

I was sent a National Institute of Justice report on US&R that imagined things like a “robo-cop”-like outer garment we could put on to enable us to lift heavy objects, which I thought was pretty far out there, but some of the other innovations we thought were pipe dreams that are now being used like a “life detector”; a device that will pick up the frequency produced by a human heartbeat and amplify it so we can look into rubble piles and see if we can find someone alive in there.

What problems in our department can we solve if we work together to find a solution? Sometimes it’s a matter of looking past the conventional solutions and having some vision that could make all of our jobs easier or even better yet, safer. Buckle up and pay attention to the details- they could save your life.