Moderate intensity fire with 1.5-2 metre flame heights, flame angle of 45 degrees and deep flaming zone behind the head. The GMS5 Japanese Weather satellite produces hemispherical images every hour at a resolution of approximately 4km per pixel. This image shows the visual channel with dark pixels showing areas of lowest brightness and white showing bright reflective areas. Thermal data can be used to identify hot regions. This image has been coloured artificially with the hottest regions coloured red, then green then blue and cooler regions left uncoloured.
Dark pixels show hotter regions than white.
Clouds can be identified as cold bright regions. Firespotter Demonstration Planning for coordination of emergency services is a challenging task that is of critical importance to state and federal governments. The systems presently available commercially are challenged by the need to integrate many data sources in a near real-time environment involving heterogeneous resources. A problem area that is particularly relevant to Australia is that of fire spotting. High quality data is available from present satellite systems such as the GMS5 and NOAA satellites which provide coverage of the Australian land-mass and which can be used to provide decision support data products that will aid state and federal emergency response planners.