Effective Wildfire
Management Using
Remote Sensing
Technology
Amanda O’Connor
L3Harris Technologies

Effective Wildfire
Management Using
Remote Sensing
Technology

Fire is a naturally occurring phenomenon and is a vital part of ecosystem
succession. Due to decades of fire suppression, many forests are in an
overgrown state which contributes to the massive fires we’ve seen in recentyears. “Fire season” in many parts of the world now lasts the entire year
versus just a few months.
In addition to fire suppression, a convergence of factors including
population spread into the wildland urban interface (WUI), climate trends
that are creating drier and hotter conditions, and a lack of mitigation onfederal, public and private lands have created a perfect storm for mega
fires to form and spread. Understanding the risks and combatting andrecovering from wildfires is a complex undertaking. Remote sensing can aid
in all aspects of fire management – mitigation, prevention, managing active
incidents and recovery.

Mitigation: Applications and Benefits of Remote Sensing for Wildfires
Fire mitigation can take on many forms from homeowners performing mitigating
efforts on their property (removing brush, ladder fuels), to fire preparation onpublic lands (thinning, creating fire breaks), as well as numerous other physicaland social changes (e.g. fire bans, public education etc.). While physicalmitigation is never 100 percent effective, pre-fire danger can be monitored andpredicted using remote sensing to assess fuel moisture, density, fuel types andtopography.
Hyperspectral data can identify fuel types, fuel moisture and density, and map
invasive plant species which can be more combustible than native species.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and multispectral data can also provide someof these measurements depending on the sensor. Risk maps can be created by
combining other information like topography, wind, weather patterns, locationof infrastructure, etc. LiDAR data can be used to understand vegetation
encroachment near critical infrastructure that can potentially cause fires or bedamaged in a fire.
Remote sensing can play an enormous role in the mitigation phase for preventing
and planning for wildfires. While some aspects require more advanced remotesensing skills, many can be performed with the guided tools that come in ENVI®
software, like change detection, vegetation health, deep learning to map manmadestructures and more.

Figure 1. LiDAR can be used to understand encroachment around utility infrastructure. Above,
you can see the automatic detection of vegetation encroachment on a utility conductor and polewith a specific area of encroachment identified (10’).

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Effective Wildfire Management Using Remote Sensing Technology

Prevention : Applications and Benefits of RemoteSensing for Wildfires
Fire prevention as well as rapid detection soon after a fire starts is a criticalcomponent to fighting fires. Currently most fires in populated areas are detectedby human sightings either via smoke or aerial surveys. Satellite imagery can beused to detect fires in remote areas such as with weather satellites like GOES
or moderate resolution imagery like NPP-VIIRS.
L3Harris has a long history of using deep learning to solve complex problems.
Using training data from the High-Performance Wireless Research and Education
Network (HPWREN), this technology can be used to automatically detect smoke
columns. L3Harris is developing an operational system to automatically detectsmoke without the need for humans in the loop using our existing Helios® camera
network and models of smoke. These kinds of investments take technology,
infrastructure and collaboration with public and private organizations as wellas the time to create reliable models.

Figure 2. Data source: HPWREN, University of California San Diego partnership project led by
the San Diego Supercomputer Center and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Institute ofGeophysics and Planetary Physics.

Figure 3. In addition to plume detection, plume thickness can also be assessed. This information
can support air and ground resources as well as provide insights on local weather andatmospheric interactions.

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Effective Wildfire Management Using Remote Sensing Technology

Response: Applications and the Benefits of Remote
Sensing for Wildfires
There are many ways remote sensing can be used during an active fire. One way
is mapping fire perimeters with thermal imagery. Thermal imagery can penetratelarge smoke plumes and be flown continuously during a fire to frequently update
the location of fire lines. L3Harris’ Jagwire™ product can be used to catalog imagerycollected during a fire as well as ancillary imagery and other information about afire. Jagwire allows boundaries between federal, state, city/county and volunteer
fire organizations to be dissolved so each can see the same holdings and data
can be streamed to Android Team Awareness Kits (ATAK) and handheld devices
for firefighters in the field. This common access is especially vital on Type 1
Federal Incidents when all levels of firefighters would be involved.
Jagwire for Fire Fighting Operations

Main use – Near real-time (NRT) data ingest and dissemination of commercial
full motion video (FMV) with thermal detections.
Jagwire provides visualization and NRT streaming out to 3rd party applications.
• Common Operating Picture SW (Interra)• Android Team Awareness Kit (ATAK) mobile units• Jagwire web users
Range and Bearing Environmental Resource Mapping Corporation (RAB) has
worked with L3Harris for many years to make thermal infrared data available tofirst responders and decision makers as quickly as possible. L3Harris helped
RAB to develop and refine an accelerated ortho-rectification and machine vision
analytics process using NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units (GPU). It has achieved
huge leaps in forward-edge parallel processing, creating seamless broad-area
thermal infrared imagery and shared heat intensity geospatial intelligence as fast
as the images are collected above the fire.
RAB is a technology innovation company in Victoria, B.C. Canada withextensive experience owning and operating airborne intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, spending many tens of thousands of hours
focused on wildfire intelligence development and operations in Canada and theU.S. RAB’s current SPOTHAWK technology offers advanced, software-defined,
human-commanded, machine-controlled, real-time remote sensing capability for
ISR platforms with existing FMV imaging systems.
The evolving SPOTHAWK technology assures that every platform operator will
have equal opportunity to create better, more frequent, rapid wildfire intelligencefrom lower cost platforms without the requirement for specialized mapping camera
payloads or manual infrared interpretation.

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Effective Wildfire Management Using Remote Sensing Technology

Figure 4. FMV is autonomously transformed on the fly via ortho-rectification and machine
vision analytics capturing heat intensity and the fire perimeter at scale. Live telemetryof firefighting intelligence streams to Team Awareness Kit (TAK) situational awarenessnetworks that already host firefighting crews and resource positions, providing longanticipated firefighter safety-of-life benefits. EOIR image courtesy of Transport Canada.

During an active fire, remote sensing can be used to identify safety zones
where threatened fire crews can find adequate refuge from an approaching fire.
In October 2020, the Calwood Fire in Boulder County, Colorado burned over ten
thousand acres and destroyed 26 structures. Dry and windy conditions caused
the fire to grow quickly, spreading nearly 1,000 acres per hour. This led toearly evacuations in several nearby communities and put areas of Boulder
and Longmont on alert.
LiDAR can be used to measure tree height, location and canopy as well as
topography and other parameters to help create safe zone maps. This kind of tool
is useful in preparation for fires or in large scale fires where there’s information
on where the fire may run. The combination and automation of creating thesetypes of safe zone maps is a key strength of ENVI and its enterprise capabilities
as other ways of combining diverse datasets can be time consuming in situations
where time is of the essence.
Jagwire for Fire Fighting Operations

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Effective Wildfire Management Using Remote Sensing Technology

Inputs for Creating Safety Zone

Results

Calwood Fire Safety Zones (October 18, 2020)

Recovery: Applications and Benefits of Remote Sensing for Wildfires
Once a fire has ended, there are often risks created by the dramatically changed
landscape. With the destruction of vegetation that holds soil in place, there isan increased risk of flash floods and landslides.These risks can be assessedusing normalized difference burn indices to understand where the fire was mostsevere and when combined with topographic information like slope and aspect,areas most at risk for these conditions can be identified. ENVI has tools to create
and layer this information using optical and SAR data to generate a heat map oflandslide and flash flood risks.

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Effective Wildfire Management Using Remote Sensing Technology

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and California Department of Forestry andFire Protection (CAL FIRE) produced a soil severity burn map of the November
2018 Camp Fire, which was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in
California’s history. This map correlates with high intensity burn areas. Using thisinformation, the Sentinel-1 SAR sensor was trained on severely burned areas
which corresponded to higher intensity returns.
There were seven Sentinel-1 scenes collected from October 30 throughNovember 29, 2018. Both vertical transmit and horizontal receive (VH) andvertical transmit and vertical receive (VV) were used to pick out differentcharacteristics, though VH proved most useful for this example. Camp Fire
shapefiles and report are courtesy of CAL FIRE.

Figure 5. Above left is threshold training. Above right shows the most intense burn zones
extracted, with DEMs or SAR derived DEMs, showing slopes with a high potential for erosion.

Following a fire, many homeowners and businesses are faced with the very harddecision of whether or not to rebuild. Some factors that come into this process
are the safety of assessing a site. For example, many trees may have burned in
an area but not fallen and are at risk for doing so. Optical imagery and LiDAR canhelp understand where there are still standing trees and fire information can beused to analyze how severe the fire was in a certain area.

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Effective Wildfire Management Using Remote Sensing Technology

This kind of information can also support decisions to erect barriers aroundwatersheds so that soot does not wash into hydrographic areas and cause
damage to aquatic ecosystems and food chains. Severe burns can effectively
sterilize the soil making it difficult for vegetation to regrow, but with imageryand SAR data you can assess the regrowth rate and better predict the rate ofrecovery. Some fires can be so hot that tree roots can continue burning even if afire is totally contained and thermal imagery can help identify these areas. In thesecases, the fire may be 100% contained, but not out until significant snow or rain.

Conclusion
While remote sensing integration into all levels of fire management can be daunting,
L3Harris and organizations involved in remote sensing like Range and Bearing arehere to help – whether it’s as simple as
pointing you in the right direction for software documentation, or as multifaceted asassessing what’s required to complete a project within your time frame and budget.
With wildfires increasing in severity and frequency and with more people
living in areas prone to them, the stakes have never been higher for effective
management. While the process of predicting, fighting and recovering fromwildfires is complex, L3Harris has solutions that are successfully deployed at
all stages of wildfire management. If you are interested in discussing how
these solutions can help your organization, please contact us.

Effective Wildfire Management Using Remote Sensing© 2021 L3Harris Technologies, Inc. | 9/2021 NO
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