The High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN), a University of California San Diego partnership project led by the San Diego Supercomputer Center and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, supports Internet-data applications in the research, education, and public safety realms.


HPWREN functions as a collaborative, Internet-connected cyberinfrastructure. The project supports a high-bandwidth wireless backbone and access data network in San Diego, Riverside, and Imperial counties in areas that are typically not well-served by other technologies to reach the Internet. This includes backbone locations, typically sited on mountain tops, to connect often hard-to-reach areas in the remote Southern California back country.

Recent Image

26 March 2021 - Sunrise at the SDSU Sky Oaks Field Station

The HPWREN team is encouraging users of its products, in this case camera images, to share their stories. This contributed article is by Kinshuk Govil, CEO of Open Climate Tech, a non-profit organization focused on building open source technologies that have the potential to help mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change.

Lessons learned from operating a public wildfire detection system

April 30, 2021

Limiting the destruction caused by wildfires requires a coordinated effort across numerous projects. In the hope of supporting these efforts, Open Climate Tech, an all volunteer nonprofit, has built an automated early wildfire smoke detection system using images from HPWREN cameras.

Video from HPWREN collaborators

An HPWREN collaborator with responsibilities for the 69 Bravo firefighter helicopter base, which also houses HPWREN cameras, including an experimental thermal camera, is demonstrating capabilities of the site via an interesting video.

Last November, the worlds largest fire fighting helicopter, the Chinook 47 with a capacity of 3,000 gallons, was tested at 69 Bravo.

Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura Counties have each secured the use of a Chinook Helicopter for this coming fire season beginning June 15th. All three helicopters will be based within 14 minutes flight time to 69 Bravo.

As a result, all four Pumpkins at 69 Bravo are in the process of being upgraded from the 6,000-gallon rubber/vinyl Pumpkins to four brand new 8,000-gallon Metal Pumpkins to accommodate the Chinooks.



HPWREN Time Lapse or

Live Stream Videos

Fires, weather conditions, flooding, and other public safety conditions are scenarios where real-time sensor data distributions can become important aspects for situational awareness. HPWREN can now provide live feeds from most of its cameras, in addition to the post-processed videos shown at:

https://www.youtube.com/user/hpwren/videos



HPWREN video (2021)

Rattlesnakes -- just another day in the field

The late Sunday patrol of Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve provides a wonderful golden hour backdrop for the finale of a week, or the beginning of the next (depending on perspective). Come Spring, rattlesnakes come out of their winter slumber and need to redefine, or remind territorial boundaries (again, it's all about perspective).

-- Temecula Canyon overlook enroute to SDSU North Station/HPWREN relay to Red Mountain. --

Videos, photos and byline by James Bourdon, HPWREN/SDSU Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve field team personnel

HPWREN Web Cameras

Recently installed 360 degree view web cameras on Chino Hill.

facebook icon twitter icon youtube icon