7th Workshop on Forest Fire Management - EARSeL, European ...

Real-time monitoring of the transmission system: watching out for fires 169
Figure 1 - An example of three text message alerts of a fire received from the Aqua satellite.
The first one is of a fire 2.07km west of tower 45 on the No2 Ankerlig - Aurora line. The observation
time was 14:45 South African Standard time.
FIRES OCCURING WITHIN 2.5KM OF ESKOM’S POWER LINE
YEAR No. of fires
2003 3987
2004 3905
2005 6147
2006 5013
2007 5135
2008 4998
Table 1 - The number of fires occurring within the buffer from 2003-2008.
4 - Conclusion
The AFIS project has shown great potential and has demonstrated the ability
of technologies such as satellite remote sensing to aid industries in the
public and private sector. The combination of research, public and private
organisational partnership have shown to work very well, and will provide
a strong link for further work in this domain.