XV: RoGO's Vision of Saving Lives through Technology Innovation with Rod Goossen

Join us as we host a thrilling conversation with Rod Goossen, founder and CEO of RoGO. Rod sheds light on the fascinating way RoGO is employing disruptive technologies to revolutionize wildland firefighting and assist first responders. Inspired by the tragic Yarnale Hillfire incident, Rod embarked on a mission to enhance situational awareness and communication among wildland firefighters. Listen in as he discusses RoGO's cutting-edge technology, offering real-time information, enabling tactical communication, and collaborations to mitigate disasters and save lives.

Get to know how RoGO is fostering advancements in wildfire technology and communication. Rod outlines how the firm is getting the word out by deploying devices to early adopters and planning for future rapid deployments. He further explores the versatile applicability of their technologies in various hazards, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and more. We also explore the unique advantages of using Iridium's L band radio frequency spectrum in forested areas, the potential of pre-deploying devices in forests, and the importance of software and data analytics in fire management. Don't miss out as Rod shares his vision of saving lives through technology and his strategies for securing funding to turn this vision into a reality.

Transcript

00:10 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
Welcome, you have found us. This is the Riot Underground. This is where we get to speak with the instigators that are changing the world with disruptive technologies. Could not be more excited than to have Rod Boussin, the founder and CEO of Rogo, in the studio with us today. Rod, welcome to the program. 

00:29 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
Thank you so much, Tom. It's a pleasure talking to you again and thank you so much for having me on your program. 

00:35 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
When you talk about disruptive technologies. You're working on, I think, one of the most interesting spaces you know going into a place where traditionally there's not much tech, particularly when you think about tech as like electronic and sensor tech, to solve a really growing problem that we see not just in the US but around the world. I'm going to ask you to give a little bit of background on Rogo and what you're doing here in a moment, but before we do, this is an audio program and we'd like to give those who are listening at home a little bit of a visual of who they're hearing this story from. So one day, there's going to be a documentary that's made about the amazing company that you're building, if you had a chance to cast yourself in that documentary. 

01:19
Who would you want playing the founder of Rogo? 

01:27 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
I think if I had to answer that just off the top of my head, I think I would choose probably Matt Damon, because he seems out of actors that I know of. He seems fairly down to earth and kind of a little bit humble I guess you know for a position and he just seems to be. He seems to portray like the real world version of who somebody could be, as opposed to the glitz and glamour version, and glitz and glamour is not me. 

02:00 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
Yeah, no, no, I get it, but also not afraid to tackle a big problem and maybe be the one solving a problem behind the scenes. So I love the selection. That said, I've hyped a little bit. Tell our audience what you're working on. 

02:16 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
Sure. So we make small, portable, lightweight satellite and, very soon, low-run, enabled devices that allow wildland firefighters and other first responders who work in remote austere or cellular denied areas, with the ability to gain access to real-time scene situation awareness information, tactical communications and collaborations, so they can mitigate the disaster faster and save more lives. Thank you. 

02:46 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
It seems like you know. Not a few weeks go by before we hear about significant wildfire problems, whether it's in the Western US, whether it's up in Canada, around the world, obviously, everybody knows about what happened in Hawaii recently. Right, tell us about this problem, and how did you get involved in the space? 

03:09 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
My quest really started in 2013. As background, my brother is a wildland firefighter. He's been a wildland firefighter for 28 years now, and so in 2013, there was a fire outside of Prescott, arizona. It was called the Yarnale. 

03:23
Hillfire In the Yarnale Hillfire 19 granite mountain hot shots died. There's no easy way to say this. They were all burned alive. And they were burned alive due to a lack of situational awareness and poor communication. And so when that event happened, I was horrified, confused and, honestly, a bit pissed off of how could these 19 men die? For what reason, really why? And so I called my brother, who I mentioned you know, he's been a wildland firefighter for years and I asked my brother, derek, how the hell could this happen? How could an incident come in not know where they were located at within the fire incident? How could they not warn them that an outflow boundary, which is like a cold front, was blowing the wind and thus the fire towards their position very, very quickly? How could they not warn them? 

04:15
My brother told me, rod, we are still using paper maps, compasses and two-way radios in wildland firefighting, that's it, that's all we have. And so when he's deployed on a fire scene, my brother also told me, more than 90% of the time he's out fighting a fire, there's absolutely zero cell phone coverage. So they still use these archaic tools paper maps, compasses, two-way radios and they don't know where other people are at. So I asked my brother, like how do you know where you're at? He's like well, we have paper maps. We all carry our cell phones, even though we work in these cellular denied areas. We carry our cell phones for one reason it's because we store electronic maps on them if we're not carrying paper maps. And so where are we at? Well, I think I'm two miles from peak A and about three miles from peak B, so you try to get a position. Obviously that's not accurate and it's not effective. And so we're trying to bring efficiency and effectiveness to wildland firefighting. 

05:15 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
Talk about what situational awareness can look like with the kinds of technology that you've put together. I imagine it's more than just the firefighters knowing where they are. 

05:26 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
Sure, it's really the firefighters knowing where they're at, knowing where they're at in relation to the fire, in other words, where the fire is at, how fast the fire might be moving toward their current location, what the wind speed, wind direction and the relative humidity is doing in that particular area, because wind weather is everything in wildland firefighting. So wind speed, wind direction determines how fast where the fire is going to go and how fast it's going to go there. Relative humidity informs firefighters how fast things are going to burn. So that's also an important piece of knowledge. The other thing that we're doing, besides providing the aforementioned, was the ability to communicate and collaborate tactical efforts at the edge. 

06:13
And so now, today, you know, tom, you might be a bulldozer crew right around the corner for me if I'm a hand crew. Hand crews are always on foot, so maybe I need help drawing this fire line before the fire rise to our location Today. Now, I don't know that you're just around the corner for me. With our devices, you'll be able to look at them out, see where, exactly where I'm at, see where the fire is projected to be within a certain time period time maybe 2040 or 60 minutes in the future, and then see you in. Oh Tom's right around the corner. I'm going to contact Tom. Tom, can you send a bulldozer over here to help us draw this fire line a little bit faster, because we can't get it done in time before the fire arrives? That sort of tactical collaboration today is not possible. With rogu's devices it is possible. 

07:00 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
So tell us more about about the device. It sounds like you're doing more than just like going to the internet for a weather report. Right, you're collecting real time data. True, and so? 

07:09 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
we have. There are two different types of firefighting teams that this is important to know. To like paint the picture. There are hand crews. Hand crews are always on foot, and then there are task force leaders. Task force leaders are usually in a vehicle where power and weight aren't so much a problem. For the hand crews, power and weight is a big problem because they're you know everything they carry. They're always already carrying about 80 to 100 pounds of weight on their backpacks. 

07:36
So they need something that's small, portable, lightweight, and so our devices are. These devices are about the size of a child's lunchbox now, but we're miniaturizing those. We're in the process of miniaturizing those to about the size of two of our smartphones stacked on top of one another. And so with that device we have satellite enablement, but we are also introducing mesh networking capability. So you know, if we're line of sight you and I, tom, we're line of sight will use the other megahertz mesh networking connectivity to speak to another. But maybe I need to speak to Joe, who's on the other side of the mountain, not line of sight. So for them our devices automatically know how do I communicate with everybody? You know, between Tom and I I can communicate over low raw over to Joe, who's on the other side of the next ridge. I need to communicate with him over satellite, since he's not line of sight. 

08:30
So we can get better device, get better situational awareness, information and tactical collaborations with our devices by using either that combination satellite or mesh network. And pretty soon we're also going to introduce band 14 cellular. That band 14 is also known as first net, so that, if you happen to be in an area of cellular connectivity, then we can use that as well. So least cost writing methodology. Between my hair megahertz says cellular and then satellite. 

09:06 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
So now you've got the ability to know where your people are, where your assets are, you know sensor data like wind speed, wind direction at a very local point, et cetera, et cetera. That's a lot of information that can be brought to bear that wasn't there before. Is it on the incident commander's all to figure that out, or do you additionally provide guidance, analytics, et cetera? 

09:31 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
So we provide this and provide the connectivity means between remote crews and then for the task force leaders. 

09:37
I can mention there in vehicles incident command is always in a covered area. 

09:42
So for task force leaders we have a 700 kilobyte full IP solution and so hand crews with their lower bandwidth drop walks can send data over lower or satellite or cellular and that same data populates on the task force leaders incident management platform and the incident commanders platform. So everybody knows where everybody is at left hand, knows what the right hand is doing and we can have more collaboration going on. So as far as platforms go, we are platform agnostic. I don't care whether whatever incident management platform you're using, whether it's ATAC and Terra Rodeum, so as far as we can, we can use plug, you know, plug in our data via API into those platforms. So the incident commander usually makes the call on which platform which, since the management software platform, is going to be used on anyone particular fire, and so we want to integrate with any of them because we just want to get data to those people who are fighting the fire on the front lines so they can mitigate the mitigate that faster, do it in a more safe and tactically collaborative way. 

10:52 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
It's really interesting Talk a little bit about the business side. Is this something that anyone listening should reach out and figure out, like how do they have this already at the ready within their you know, their organization, whether it's a firefighting unit, whether it's a state government, etc. Or is this something where, once an incident starts, you can quickly deploy new tech, kind of kind of how does that side of the operation work? 

11:20 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
Right now, today we're deploying devices out to really champions who are who are early adopters of technology, and so we're getting the word out from them. Once you know, down the road in the future we intend to have a cache of these devices that can be very rapidly deployed at to a fire scene when a new fire incident starts. And I am doing a lot of talking about wildfire, because wildfire is where my heart is and that's where our first that, that is our beachhead market. Do you know that all disaster response where there's earthquake, tornado, hurricane, all those sort of different disaster response types still rely basically on the same archaic technology that wildland firefighter seems. And so since we've launched our devices, we have had a lot of initial interest from others who fight natural disasters and other types of hazards in remote areas, and that does include FEMA, border Patrol in the National Guard and others. 

12:26
We can monitor remote utility lines for PG&E, since PG&E's power lines have started the most disastrous fires in California. We can monitor their power lines. We can tell them precisely when and where they went down at. That's not an ability they have today. So there's a lot of different applications, everything from, like I said, first responders to adventure travel insurance industry. There's a lot of commercial applications to this as well. 

12:57 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
So yeah, anyone managing timber does controlled burns. I imagine this is an important tool for those kind of things to keep them controlled. 

13:04 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
Yeah yeah. So for logging or like controlled burns. Controlled burns is actually a perfect scenario for rogue advice deployment, Because if you're getting used to using our devices, having it in a more controlled environment, like on a controlled burn, is a perfect place for you to get familiar with our devices before you need to go deploy them on a mega fire. 

13:30 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
One of the things that is interesting to talk about. We have a lot of entrepreneurs and investors and other people that listen into this program. We run startup accelerators. We work with a lot of early stage companies, like we've worked with rogo in the past. You've bootstrapped this venture for a long time, put a lot of your own sweat equity and cash money into this, but you're in a situation now where you're beginning to talk with investors and leverage some government funding. If somebody out there was interested in getting involved, what's the best way to reach out to you? 

14:01 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
Reach out to us. The easiest address is info at rogocomcom, and they can also get our website, which is rogocomcom, and use the Contact Us link to send an email and love to engage in a conversation with anybody who's either interested in using our devices or possibly interested in investing with us. We have a mission not just to save lives, but we have really an environmental mission also. Wildland fires emit billions of tons annually globally in CO2 emissions. More CO2 emissions the hotter our environment gets, the hotter and drier our environment gets, the more wildfires we have. It's a downward spiral. So we do have a large, not just the human component of saving lives and saving property, but environmental component of saving CO2 emissions so we can extinguish fires more efficiently and that CO2 helps reduce global warming. 

15:03 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
Yeah, it's fascinating. It's a multi-pronged but very kind of intertwined set of problems that you can address, and it's really about creating real-time data and then being able to communicate it. I heard something I'll ask you to confirm for me that a lot of these fires are so powerful that they actually can create their own weather. So if you want to monitor the weather, you actually have to do it on site with devices like you create. 

15:33 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
They do, yeah, so wildfires absolutely do create their own weather, and I would invite, if anybody has never seen a fire tornado it is one of the damn scariest things I've ever seen in my life. You can YouTube fire tornadoes, or fire whirls as they're also called, and they are just the same way a tornado forms from convection Wildfire. The same thing occurs, except it is literally a spinning wind wall of flame and they are very scary. There was a fire tornado in California this last fire season that had, if I recall right, it had the same wind speed and destructive capabilities as an EF4 tornado. So pretty significant. And they wildfires do absolutely create their own weather. 

16:34
A pyrokinemium alumus cloud is another scary looking. You've seen the cumulus cloud, nice cotton ball, looking. Well, this is all black because it's from the ash and soot of a fire. But those pyrokinemium bilovus clouds apt just like regular clouds in that they create their own lightning. And so what happens when lightning strikes? Well, we'll get another fire. So again, that is another downward spiral where the longer a fire operates, especially under certain temperature conditions, now we're creating clouds that can create fire tornadoes or lightning, which again starts more fires. So it's better just to get a handle on it before it gets out of control and these large weather anomalies start occurring because of it. 

17:25 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
Yes, I will definitely look that up. I was not familiar with fire tornadoes, although that sounds like the great name for Matt Damon movie, yep. 

17:34
Throw that out there in case any studio executives are listening in. Let's talk a little bit more about communications. As you said, most of these challenges are in places where you just don't have cellular connectivity right. So you've got satellite. If you can get a clear line of sight to this guy, you're leveraging Laura to develop out these mesh networks. What's the next piece in creating kind of robust and maybe redundancy in communications? Is something like a starlink a possibility? What else are you looking at from that connectivity point of view? 

18:09 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
From a connectivity point of view, the reason we're using for our satellite connectivity we're using Iridium. The reason we're using Iridium is Iridium transmits on the L band of the radio frequency spectrum. I have a very good authority from somebody high up in military command that starlinks frequencies because they're so high that they do not penetrate either deciduous or carnifers tree canopy very well at all, whereas Iridium's L band, which is a lower frequency than starlink uses, does penetrate both deciduous and carnifers tree canopy well. So I'm agnostic as to what satellite provider we use. If you have a clear line of sight and you wanna use starlink, great, use it. If you're in a forest tree under tree canopy, you better stick with Iridium because of the lower L band frequencies. So I don't mind. I'm a software platform agnostic and I'm satellite communication system agnostic. I just wanna get the data to these firefighters so you can save more lives and put out the fire faster. 

19:15
If somebody finds it applicable to use starlink, may a task force leader in a remote area of his vehicle. If he can use starlink, great, I don't have a problem with that. Rogo provides the software that makes our devices run over satellite. We have a lot of specialized software that we do for some very special data packaging to get information sent over satellite in an efficient and effective manner. But I see us going more towards the software side where we're using those data pieces to inform and create better data predictive analytics. 

19:53
Where is the fire gonna be 20, 40, 60 minutes from now? Where can we pre-position human and non-human firefighting resources to do things like draw fire lines or protect high value structures, homes in a particular area before the fire's arrival? How do we best communicate and tactically coordinate slurry drops along with hand crews who are on the ground, so that we can make sure slurry drops are more efficient, more effective, more targeted and that they don't miss their spot, since slurry bomber pilots are flying through thick, heavy smoking, can't always see the drop zone. These sorts of things we have Rogo's building solutions for so that we can create a fully communicated tactical effort at the edge. 

20:39 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
And do you see a future where this technology isn't just carried in along with the other 80 to 100 pounds a year, but it's already been pre-deployed and we have truly smart forests that are collecting data all the time? 

20:54 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
That's very possible. 

20:55
Rogo did just make a sale of one of our devices to specifically monitor wind speed, wind direction, relative humidity and dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures for a fire management officer also known as an FMO up in Washington state. 

21:12
So he can get the same data off our devices, which cost a couple of thousand dollars that he normally would use a $30,000 ROS or remote access weather station to get that same information. 

21:24
So because we can provide that data at a lower cost in the future, yes, I would like to envision seeing our devices deployed for monitoring and then, when a fire does break out, you already have a network of sensor data, a network of communications paths where the communications is instant, it's ubiquitous over a certain area and we can provide data and communications coverage to first responders very rapidly. That certainly would make sense from an efficiency and effective standpoint and if we can get our devices deployed faster, that would be a big advantage. One of the advantages to the ROGO system now is that we are instantly deployable and we don't have to wait for VHF repeaters to be set up along multiple ridges in a large fire scene and so forth like that. So because our devices are instantly deployable, we feel we can provide better safety and better communications immediately and on initial attack of a fire. That is the time of the largest fire growth. It was also the time when the most line of duty deaths occur in wild land firefighting because of the lack of communications infrastructure. 

22:46 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
I really love what you're doing. It's transformational technology. Thank you, tom. As we wrap up here, what is it that you're most excited about as you look to the future, and maybe what is the biggest hurdle that still needs to be let go of? 

23:04 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
What I'm most excited about in the future is making a positive difference for really everybody, from the amount of taxpayer funds we spend on fighting wild land fires to the air quality that we breathe, especially here in the West where, when wildfires are prevalent, I'm most excited about trying to make a positive difference for our society in many different facets from CO2 emissions to the financial savings that can become a bit to saving lives, so I'm most excited about that. 

23:35
The biggest hurdle to obtaining that is financing. We have the technology that we need today to make a fully integrated, small, affordable system. It's just a matter of funding to get that in and with the amount of money that our government spends just the US government spends it widely in firefighting. A fraction of that could solve for all of these problems that they are suffering from. That prevents them from putting out wildfires faster. Yeah, so it has a big ROI to it. 

24:10 - Tom Snyder  (Host)
So anyone in the public sector listening get those RFPs out there. Funding doesn't have to look like investment, it can just look like sales. Get the RFPs out there. As we mentioned before investors online there are opportunities to get on board to a rapidly growing and really exciting company. Thanks so much for joining us today, rod. I look forward to having you back on. Maybe a year from now we'll see a headline about the 19 firefighters whose lives were saved by your technology. 

24:37 - Rod Goossen (Guest)
That is my ultimate goal and if we can achieve that, that saving of lives we would be, I would consider us a definite success. So thank you so much, tom, for having me on your program today and for allowing us to get the word about RogoAl. Thank you very, very much. Wonderful thanks. 

24:57 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Riot Undergraph Podcast. This podcast is created and produced by Riot Studios with music by Scott Jackson. Riot is a nonprofit focused on economic development through the Internet of Things, or IoT, by capturing emerging markets, producing educational events and conferences and accelerating startups, creating IoT opportunities locally, nationally and globally. Learn how to engage by visiting us at riotorg or sending us an email at info at riotorg.