page_title: Aerial firefighting and forestry in southern Australia
section_title: Infra-red mapping – FLIR & Linescan
hierarchical_section_title: Aerial firefighting and forestry in southern Australia / Mapping / Infra-red mapping – FLIR & Linescan
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Die Wärmebildkamera einer EC 135 der Bundespolizei (aufgenommen während der Internationalen Luft- und Raumfahrtausstellung Berlin) English: The thermographic camera on an EC 135 (picture taken during the International Air and Space Exhbition)
context_page_description: The development of aerial firefighting and forestry in southern Australia ran in parallel with the rapid improvements in aircraft technology over the last century. As more advanced and capable aircraft became available firefighters and foresters quickly sought opportunities to utilise and adapt them.
  Aircraft have three main advantages over ground resources: speed, access, and observation.
  Aircraft have been used for a wide range of tasks including reconnaissance, firebombing, crew transport, aerial ignition, back burning, gathering infrared imagery as well as operational forestry tasks like aerial photography, surveys, spraying, fertilising and seeding.
  Much of the early pioneering work in Australia was led by the Forests Commission Victoria in collaboration with other State forestry and fire authorities including the Western Australia Forests Department, Forestry Commission of NSW, Woods and Forest Department of South Australia and Forestry Tasmania. Federal agencies including the CSIRO also contributed significantly.
context_section_description: Monitoring fire activity through thick smoke has always been a problem for firefighters. Research over many years had been directed at Infra-Red imagery which can see through smoke (but not cloud or water vapour). Early IR Systems produced images on film in both the 3-5 micron band and 8-14 micron band.
  Several approaches were developed in the 1960s by the CSIRO and the Weapons Research Laboratory in conjunction with notable bushfire researcher Alan McArthur from the Commonwealth Forestry and Timber Bureau. In May 1971 the Forests Commission Victoria tested a Bendix mapper in Gippsland to delineate between burnt and unburnt forest after fuel reduction burning. The Mapper was suspended under a Cessna 182 with all the clumsy electronic equipment mounted in the back seat of the aircraft, but the results were disappointing because overnight rain had deadened the temperature difference.
  The Forests Commission also trialled an infra-red Pyro-vidicon tube system in a Bell Jetranger and Piper Seneca in early 1981 and then borrowed an Inframetrics Forward Looking Infra-Red (FLIR) from the US Forest Service in late 1981 for operations from a light helicopter. In 1982-83, there was an opportunity to test a FLIR unit owned by the National Safety Council of Australia (NSCA) during the Cann River fires. The unit was mounted on a Bell Longranger helicopter which proved very useful at identifying smouldering hot spots through thick smoke and to direct ground crews during the mop-up phase. The camera was mounted on a gimbal under the front of the helicopter flying at 6000–8000 feet (but as low as 300 feet) and operated from the front seat by a navigator. FLIR operates in the 8-14 micron band with a narrow field of view and these trials were a success which prompted the Forests Commission to purchase their own Inframetrics FLIR unit in 1983 which was first used during a bushfire near Lorne shortly after.
  The use of infra-red linescan technology was first trialled after the Ash Wednesday fires when the Forests Commission used the CSIRO F27 research aircraft to conduct an IR scan of the Warburton/Powelltown fire. The output was essentially IR photography and delays were experienced as the product output was developed.
  Further use of IR linescan technology occurred during the Cann River fire in 1983 with the NSCA Queenair aircraft conducting IR linescan operations. However, the operational “coming of age” of this technology occurred a year later during the 1984-85 bushfire season when an infrared linescanner was mounted in a NSCA Kingair 200C and a GAF Nomad aircraft were used to monitor the spread of major fires and the progress of back burning across North Eastern Victoria. Scanning was predominantly conducted during the night and the imagery made available to the fire controller by 5 am. This enabled firefighting tactics to be developed well before the day shift crews were due to leave base camps. Black and white photographs were produced of the line scan imagery by the local chemist in Bright and were provided to ground crews departing to the fireline. Victorian forest firefighters have rarely ever had such accurate and detailed information available to them at that time of the day.
  A number of remotely controlled Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), also known as drones, were hired by Emergency Management Victoria and the Department of Environment Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) in 2016 to test their effectiveness as a low cost means to gather intelligence at bushfires, planned burns and floods. Melbourne and Metropolitan Fire Brigade drones fitted with infrared cameras were used successfully at a burning peat fire at Cobden – Camperdown in April 2018 and again at a bushfire at Rosedale in January 2019 to detect hot spots during the mopping-up operation.
caption: A thermographic camera on a gimbal mount.
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