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

SIGRI - AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM FOR DETECTING, MONITORING,
CHARACTERIZING FOREST FIRES AND ASSESSING DAMAGE
BY LEO-GEO DATA
F. Ferrucci 1 , R. Rongo 1 , A. Guarino 1 , G. Fortunato 1 ,
G. Laneve 2 , E. Cadau 2 , B. Hirn 3 ,
C. Di Bartola 3 , L. Iavarone 4 , R. Loizzo 5
1 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra - Università della Calabria, Rende (CS), Italy
2 Centro di Ricerca Progetto San Marco - Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma Italy
3 IES Consulting,-Intelligence for Environment and Security, Roma, Italy
4 Società Aerospaziale Mediterranea S.r.l, Pozzuoli (NA), Italy
5 Agenzia Spaziale Italiana - Centro di Geodesia Spaziale, Matera, Italy
Abstract: Forest fires are in the focus of the SIGRI project (Integrated
System for Fire Risk Management) funded by the Italian Space Agency
(ASI). The project, started late in November 2008. It is due for completion
by end-2011.
The EO part of the project is centred on (1) SAR borne observation in the
X, C and the L-bands, from ASI and ESA platforms Cosmo-Skymed and
Envisat; (2) on TIR/MIR/SWIR/NIR - and Red, where appropriate - observation
by opto-electronic payloads operating at all spatial resolutions from
2006 onwards (SEVIRI, MODIS, HRVIR, HRG, TM, ASTER, LISS-III) and (3)
upon SAR very high resolution (Cosmo SkyMed) and V-NIR observation by
new commercial or dual-use satellites.
The system, of which the appointed user is the Italian Department of Civil
Protection (DPC), is expected to deal at once with law enforcement (burn
scar mapping), preparedness (risk mapping and urban interface fire contingency
planning) and operational issues (fire detection and propagation prediction).
It will be demonstrated in three operational theaters (northern
Italy - Liguria, southern Italy - Calabria, and the island of Sardinia), all
characterized by high frequency of occurrence of fires, but greatly differing
in terms of fires style.
1 - Introduction
Forest fires are the main threat to forests in the Mediterranean Region, as
in Italy, where they kept steadily above ca. 7500 fires and ca. 40.000
hectares per year in the last decade. The management of this phenomenon
by providing forecasts, performing detections and assessing damages,
based on the use of advanced technologies (satellite data) is the objective
of the SIGRI (Integrated System for Fire Risk Management) project. In particular,
the objective of SIGRI is the development of products which can
useful to the firefighting activities along all the phases which can be dis-
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