Wildfires have emerged over the last decade as one of the greatest potential threats to local agencies managing Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and power utilities. On Wednesday, April 27, FTS and AEM will be joining forces with one of our top customers, CORE Electric Cooperative, for How to Maximize Wildfire Preparedness & Response.
The one-hour learning session will focus on how wildfire management agencies, city and county fire departments, and their colleagues in the utility industry can address the challenges posed by wildfires head-on with the right tools and strategies. Attendants will come away from the event understanding the key aspects of planning for the entire wildfire event curve and how to implement leading monitoring hardware and software solutions that are already delivering major value for utilities and municipalities around the country.
What to Expect:
At How to Maximize Wildfire Preparedness & Response, AEM’s wildfire enablement team will review how wildfires affect key business drivers for utilities and municipalities, including public and employee safety, liability prevention, and asset protection.
Next, the panel will discuss the entire wildfire event curve, highlighting how local fire departments, wildfire management agencies, and utilities can minimize the damaging impact of fires. This will include presenting proven and emerging best practices for…
- Preparing for wildfires
- Wildfire detection
- Response & coordination
- Proactive fire prevention
From there, the team will map industry-leading monitoring, detection, and response technologies to each step of the event curve, creating an actionable roadmap that attendees can replicate at their own utility. This will include recommendations for…
- Cameras for detecting fire starts and monitoring growth/progress
- Weather monitoring stations with NFDRS-compliant fire coding
- Rapidly deployable portable weather stations to monitor fires and track response
Pam Feuerstein, COO of CORE Electric Cooperative, will present how her team recently transformed their approach to wildfire prevention and response with support from FTS and their parent company AEM.
Fifteen minutes will be reserved for attendee questions.
Meet the Presenters:
Craig Waters, Sr. Utilities Account Executive, AEM: Craig is responsible for identifying and providing weather-based solutions for commercial customers with a focus on the utility space across the US. He recently joined AEM in December 2021 and has spent his entire career in the utility industry. He started with Pacific Gas & Electric where he worked for 16 years with a focus on supporting solutions for the Electric Distribution department. He then joined Autodesk to help define and provide GIS solutions for electric utilities, and finally, prior to AEM, he worked for Aclara selling and supporting Advanced Metering infrastructure (AMI) solutions to utilities in the western US. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Pam Feuerstein, P.E., Chief Operating Officer, CORE Electric Cooperative: Pam is the COO for CORE Electric Cooperative in Sedalia, Colorado. She is responsible for engineering, distribution and transmission operations, power supply, and safety for CORE. She also serves as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Compliance Offer and Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Senior Manager. Ms. Feuerstein joined CORE in 2010 as the System Planning Manager and later served as the Engineering Manager. Prior to working at CORE, she worked for an engineering consulting firm, Stanley Consultants, for over 15 years, with a focus on electric infrastructure design for electric utilities. Pam is a registered Professional Engineer and has a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Montana State University. She currently serves on the Executive Committee for the Douglas County Foundation for Schools Board.
Theo Harvey, Account Executive, AEM: Theo is an Account Executive responsible for wildfire weather and monitoring in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States. He has been a member of the FTS/AEM family since joining the team in 2017 as an Inside Sales Rep. Prior to joining AEM, Theo worked for GeoPacific Consultants as a geotechnical technician and MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) as a RADARSAT-2 Planning Technician. Theo holds a Bachelor of Science in physical geography from the University of Lethbridge, where he studied advanced satellite based remote sensing technology and researched the effects of post wildfire salvage logging.
Join Us Live:
If you’re in wildfire management, or responsible for operational safety or at a power utility, we hope you’ll join us on April 27 for How to Maximize Wildfire Preparedness & Response. We believe this session will deliver the insights you need to protect your business, your customers, and your reputation as a utility.