Geoinformation for Disaster and Risk Management - ISPRS

In-Orbit Verification of On-board Fire Detection
and Analysis
Timely provision of information is essential to
support decision-making of fire managers in fire
suppression planning, crew mobilization and
movement. Therefore, on-board processing of fire
front attributes, including geo-referencing and their
direct transmission to the user on the ground is a
challenging task for small satellites, but it should be
technically feasible.
Key procedures for on-board fire detection and
analysis are pre-processing and extraction of fire
attributes.
In-orbit verification of on-board fire detection and
analysis will be conducted on Germany's first
Technologie Erprobungs Traeger (TET-1). TET-1 is a
space-borne verification tool for new small satellite
technologies, which is to be performed in the
framework of the On-Orbit Verification (OOV)
program of the German Space Agency. The
successful BIRD mission and the planned on-board
extraction of fire front attributes on TET-1 are two
important milestones on the way to the creation of a
prospective Fire Monitoring Constellation.
Need of a Fire Monitoring Constellation Based
on Small Satellites
The demand by fire mangers for repeated, fast, and
detailed information for all fire fronts in the areas of
surveillance is highly justified. Wildfire activity is at
maximum in the afternoon and optimum wildfire
observation requires two consecutive data takes at
13 -15 and 16 - 18 clock local time. These local
observation times are not convenient to the majority
of earth observation missions.
The essential fire attribute information, obtained
twice during the peak period of wildfire burning will
not be delivered by existing or planned satellite
sensors, because their spatial resolution is too
coarse and most of these systems have local
observation times before noon. Therefore, a
dedicated Fire Monitoring Constellation (FMC) must
be implemented to secure (i) a spatial resolution of
200-300m and (ii) optimum observation times for
fire detection and monitoring in the afternoon.
The FMC must resolve the deficiencies identified by
CEOS (Csiszar 2008, chapter 3) by provision of:
�Active Fire Products at the specified 250m
spatial resolution within a daily observing
cycle,
�Continuity and consistency between Active
Fire Products derived from the FMC and
existing (see Table 1) and planned
meteorological or environmental satellite
sensors with fire-adapted IR bands, such as,
the Sea Land Surface Temperature
Radiometer (SLSTR) on Sentinel-3 and the
IR sensor of Meteosat Third Generation
(MTG) - with coarser spatial resolution
(greater than 1km).
The FMC should consist of four small satellites of the
BIRD/TET class in low earth orbit and be equipped
with compact and intelligent IR sensors and onboard
data processing. Active Fire Products from a
FMC will be of great value also for fire ecologists,
health organizations and national administrations
worldwide (Oertel 2005).
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