
Red Dot Award: Design Concept 2024
Li Haolin’s design concept, Innovative Design of Products and Systems for Forest Fires, addresses professional forest firefighting teams while integrating six dimensions of firefighting operations: function division, information transfer, firefighting modes, mobility, resource mobilisation and emergency risk avoidance. The project leverages existing command systems and addresses the unique challenges faced by forest firefighters in the target region. The design concept, developed for the Daxinganling area of Heilongjiang, China, was awarded a Red Dot: Best of the Best and is one of the top projects in the Red Dot: Next Gen Award in 2024. In an interview, Li Haolin from Jiangnan University tells us more about his project.
What is the background to this project and why is it necessary?
In recent years, significant global climate change, a noticeable increase in extreme weather events, and massive fires in California and Australia in 2018 and 2019 have caused a lot of destruction to human and wildlife habitats. These events are truly alarming. I also want to contribute to the professional study of forest fires.
What is the most difficult thing to solve in order for this project to be a success?
By analysing the existing equipment and some cases of command systems, it is found that the current equipment is still quite separate from integrated command and control and lacks some integrated innovative designs. Therefore, the way of relying on scientific command and dispatch and cooperating with more complete equipment design to reduce the waste of resources from all aspects is an important standard to judge whether our project is successful.
Why is good design important?
Forest firefighting equipment is a type of design that is very much in tune with human relationships, so it is necessary to fully consider the relationship between human and equipment, as well as the operating environment. Speaking of details, there is a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on the chest of the design which, once the surface fire has been substantially extinguished, can continue to rely on its automation to automatically search for underground sparks that could re-ignite, minimising the likelihood of re-ignition in the forest area where the fire has been extinguished.
How does it feel to be among the top projects and nominees for the Red Dot: Peter Zec Prize?
It is the first time that the Red Dot: Peter Zec Prize is being presented this year. This honour is really beyond my expectations. I chose the topic of forest fire prevention because I hoped that such design topics related to ecological environmental protection would receive more attention and that more and more designers would focus on and participate in them.