This past month, the Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting (CoE) achieved a significant milestone by launching the Colorado Team Awareness Kit (COTAK™) service. 

The COTAK team recently met with Aerial Fire Magazine to discuss how we are providing real time information to wildland firefighters and other first responders. 

CoE Deputy Director of Science and Research Dr. Bob Gann was recently featured on the “Smart Firefighting” podcast with a discussion on COTAK. Bob has been instrumental in building the cotak.gov website and user management system, and in this podcast he shares his insight on why COTAK was built and what our value proposition is to first responders in Colorado. If you have 20 minutes to spare the podcast episode is well worth a listen!

Apple Podcast Link 

Spotify Link 

The COTAK system is now capable of supporting mutual aid, meaning that multiple agencies can use COTAK to access a common channel in the app and view the locations of first responders from all agencies involved in an operation. COTAK currently has statewide mutual aid channels for law enforcement, wildland fire, and snowstorm operations. Mutual aid channels for smaller counties or regions of the state can be created as well.

The way mutual aid works in COTAK is through the creation of "parent" entities, which can have multiple agencies as their "children." One or more channels can be created in the parent, and all children agencies automatically are given access to these channels. 

For example a county can be a parent entity, and within that county the three fire departments, two police departments, and the sheriff's office can all be designated as children of the county. Then COTAK creates a county "owned" channel in TAK called "County MAC" and this channel automatically becomes available to any first responder in the six agencies within that county. This channel can be turned on or off by each first responder depending on their needs.

Contact the COTAK project team at support@cotak.gov if you would like to learn more or have mutual aid deployed in your area of Colorado. 

Announcing COTAK Channels

Channels selection for iTAK has been recently released as part of the 2.7 app update (July 2023). This major enhancement now allows all COTAK users using ATAK, iTAK, or WinTAK to choose which channels you would like to share your location and interact with. 

Turning a channel to the "on" position means you are sharing your location on that channel and can view and interact with all other COTAK users on that same channel. Turning a channel to the "off" position hides your location from users on that channel. There is no limit to the number of channels you may turn on at a time.

iTAK Upgrade Instructions

Since it is a significant upgrade to the iTAK app we're recommending users completely delete iTAK and re-download the app. This will require the user to log in again and select the "Tak Channels" tool along the bottom menu bar, then turn on the appropriate channels. If you've forgotten your password, go to cotak.gov, attempt to log in and use the forgot password link. Reload the app, set your callsign, dot color and use the QR code for your username/password. The iTAK Installation Guide for COTAK contains detailed instructions on how to accomplish this.