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EOM August 2005 > Departments > Fire!
Seeing Through Smoke — Earth Observations Enhance Fire And Smoke Decision Support Systems In The Eastern United States
Introduction
By Stefan Falke and Stephen Ambrose
Imagine a Web site providing access to a multitude of fire-related data sets and applications for visualizing and analyzing those data. Information technologies are making feasible a distributed Web infrastructure that can assist in finding, analyzing, and integrating fire-related information. Aided by new information science tools and computer science networks, researchers and decision makers are poised to exchange information more effectively, integrate data and analyses more efficiently, and interact more actively. Diverse organizations from industry, government, and academia are already realizing the benefits of using Web technology to share data and tools in fire, smoke, and air quality management decision support systems. These ideas, concepts, and visions were a central theme this past May at the EastFIRE conference focused on fire management issues in eastern North America.
Eastfire Conference
The EastFIRE conference, hosted by George Mason University, assembled researchers, managers, technicians, firefighters, and software vendors to share information and advances in eastern North America wildland fire research and applications. The conference focused on eastern North America and how its topography, climate, ecosystems, and development patterns differ from those in western North America, where historically there has been a stronger association with wildland fires. Questions concerning wildland fire events at the urban-forest interface are particularly relevant to the more populous eastern portion of North America and present unique challenges in understanding and managing fire, smoke, and air quality.
Sessions at the conference included:
- Remote Sensing and Modeling of Fire Occurrence and Behavior for Eastern Wildland Fire
- Remote Sensing and Modeling Applications for Wildland Fire in the Eastern Wildland Urban Interface
- Variability and Wildland Fire
- Wildland Fire Biodiversity, Landscapes, and Remote Sensing Applications
- Remote Sensing and Modeling of Burned Areas, Fuel Mapping, and Social Impacts of Fires
- Remote Sensing and Modeling of Fire and Air Quality
- Remote Sensing and Modeling for Wildland Fire in Eastern States Landscapes and Watersheds
- Decision Support Systems for Wildland Fire Management
Topics addressed in the session on decision support systems included fire management information systems, geographic information systems (GIS) models, knowledge management, and partnerships between fire scientists and decision-makers. This issue of EOM features three papers from that session focused on the unique needs in using satellite data in fire and air quality management in the Eastern United States. Further information about the conference is available at: http://eastfire.gmu.edu/workshop. Further information about EastFire and George Mason University programs is available at: http://www.ceosr.gmu.edu/.
Fire-Related Data On The Web
A variety of government, academic, commercial, and non-profit Web sites disseminate an impressive collection of fire-related data, including fire occurrence, fire characteristics, vegetation indices, fire weather, and modeled smoke patterns. The prevalence of fire-related data and applications on the Web is due to many factors including attention given to recent severe wildland fire seasons, the wide range of organizations involved in managing fire and smoke, the multiple uses for the data, a variety of sensors capable of collecting fire data, and the relative simplicity in communicating and relating to the data (e.g., fire occurrence locations or a satellite image of a large smoke plume). Many of these datasets, particularly those derived from satellite imagery, are available at global scales. The wealth of fire data, both collected in the field and derived from satellite measurements, offer a tremendous resource, particularly when combined with one another.
This issue of EOM highlights a few of the many Web-based information systems that provide access to fire-related data. The three fire-related articles in this issue describe:
- the NOAA-NESDIS Hazard Mapping System (HMS) that provides maps of analyzed fire occurrence and smoke plumes from three satellites (MODIS, GOES, and AVHRR)
- the Forest Service Active Fire Mapping System, a collaboration among the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, NASA, and University of Maryland that serves as an interface to the MODIS Rapid Response System, and
- Bluesky, a smoke modeling framework that includes Web outputs for visualizing fire location data, forecasted smoke plumes, air pollution concentrations, and meteorological data.
Part of the lure of Web-accessible fire data is the potential for dynamic (automated) access and use in custom applications. Rather than a particular Web information system being the end point of the information flow, its products are linked to other systems "down stream" where the data are further refined or combined with other information. Technologies such the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications and Web services, are making this type of dynamic interaction possible on the Web. Data from the Hazard Mapping System and Active Fire Mapping System are already available through OGC Web Map Servers.
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The availability of datasets through the Web has allowed subsequent "value-added" processing and analysis. For example, DataFed is a Web infrastructure that provides the foundation for accessing distributed air quality data and for processing and visualizing these data through Web services. It provides mediator software for creating "views" of data — including maps, time series, and tables — that are distributed among multiple Web servers. The views are created using Web services, thereby allowing them to be used and reused in custom applications with standard Web programming languages.
Figure 1: Spatial-temporal analysis of HMS-analyzed fire pixels in DataFed. Click on image to see enlarged.
Figure 1 illustrates an example of a "third-party" application built within DataFed that provides maps and a new temporal view to fire pixel data from the NOAA-NESDIS Hazard Mapping System. The map shows the aggregated fire pixel count on 2004 February 9 at nodes centered on 50km2 radius grid cells. The size of each red square in the map is proportional to the number of fire pixels counted at a node. The companion time series shows the temporal pattern of the fires between 2004 February and May for a particular node in southern Florida. The time plot indicates a substantial number of detected fires in February followed by less activity in March and sporadic activity thereafter. Clicking on another location in the map or a different date in the time plot will update the display for the respective location or date thereby allowing simple exploration of the dataset.
Fire, Smoke And Air Quality Data And Applications Networks
Air quality researchers and managers use fire data products to characterize emissions from wildland, prescribed, and agricultural fires and to understand the impact of smoke on downwind air quality. A workshop sponsored by NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) examined potential collaborative research among the agencies and concluded that two primary issues in using fire data in air quality applications were knowing what data were available and understanding the relationships among similar fire data products. The EastFIRE conference continued and broadened this discussion. An outstanding issue in using fire detection data in air quality applications is the relationship among various fire location datasets. Comparisons are needed to understand the differences in satellite fire detections due to a sensor's spatial resolution, sampling time, or detection algorithm. Analysis is needed in understanding the relationship between ground-collected fire occurrence data and the satellite-derived fire products. Addressing these questions involves the exchange of data and ideas among government, industry, and academic organizations; a collaborative network linking data collectors, data processors, data analysts, and data end-users.
Many efforts are underway to build environments that foster collaboration — such as co-laboratories, virtual communities, and cyberinfrastructure. For example, the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) offers a framework for improving the information flow between Earth science data providers and users through the application of new information technologies. Infrastructures such as ESIP, DataFed, and others may realize the vision of harmonizing the data and information technologies needed to foster the development of networks of fire-related data and applications that, in turn, could support decision support systems for fire, smoke, and air quality management. Advances in information technology will continue to provide new opportunities for networking and exploring new approaches to integrating Earth observations.
Further Reading
L. Boschetti, "Lessons to be learned from the comparison of three satellite-derived biomass burning products," Geophysical Research Letters, 31, L21501, 2004.
EPA/NASA/NOAA, Joint EPA/NASA/NOAA Workshop on Air Quality and Related Climate Change Issues, Research Triangle Park, http://www.cleanairinfo.com/EPA_NASA_NOAA/, 2004.
R.B. Husar, K. Hoijarvi, and S.R. Falke, "DataFed: Web Services-Based Mediation of Distributed Data Flow," in Proceedings of Earth Sun-System Technology Conference.
A. Soja, J. Al-Saadi, B. Pierce, J. Szykman, D.J. Williams, T. Pace, J. Kordzi, and W.R. Barnard, "Using Satellite-Based Products to Enhance Existing Area Burned Data," in Proceedings of 14th International Emission Inventory Conference, 2005.
About the Authors
Stefan Falke, D.Sc. is Research Assistant Professor at the Environmental Engineering Science & Center for Air Pollution Impact and Trend Analysis at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Stephen Ambrose is Program Manager for Disaster Management at NASA HQ in Washington, DC.
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©Copyright 2005-2021 by GITC America, Inc. Articles may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior authorization from GITC America, Inc. The original version of this article can be found at: https://www.eomonline.com/EOM_Jul05/article.php?Article=department02 |