Imagine being able to accurately predict where forest fires might strike — even in the most remote locations — using freely accessible data from a NASA satellite. This is the work of Quazi Hassan, a geomatics engineering associate professor in the University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering.
Currently, the system for forecasting forest fires is reliant on weather stations where data is captured on rainfall volume, temperature, relative humidity and wind speed. Using data captured by NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite, Hassan’s team has been able to capture data on precipitable water, surface temperature and moisture of vegetation, to create five classes of forest fire risk.
Using historic data, his team found that their high, very high and extremely high classifications coincided with 77% of the fires in Alberta from 2009 to 2011.
Click here for source (UToday)
Image Credit: Colleen De Neve
