Latest MODIS satellite map showing fires over a ten-day period. Satellite data is currently used along with mobile phone technology in South Africa to provide crucial early warnings. The same system could be used to prevent bushfire disasters in Australia.
Credit: MODIS Rapid Response System at NASA/GFSC
South Africa, like much of the African continent, is home to fiery landscapes that frequently burn. Many of these fires are not 'disasters' as such — indeed they are a necessary part of the ecosystem.
But an intense fire in the wrong place can be a big disaster and wildfires kill people and destroy property and grazing every year in South Africa, as they do in Australia and California.
They also damage key infrastructure such as electricity networks. Fires are the second biggest cause of power line faults in South Africa after lightning. If a fire burns beneath a live power cable it not only causes havoc with the grid but causes spikes in the system that can damage equipment all over the country.
So there is a real need to detect and provide early warning of fires here. Remote sensing can help — polar-orbiting satellites in particular, such as MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer), are very accurate and can locate burning fires to about 200-metres precision, four times a day.
This is not quite good enough for early warning — what if there is a cloud covering the fire when the satellite passes overhead, or a fire starts just after it has gone?
That's when data from geostationary satellites step in. Meteosat second generation weather satellites offer coarser (~3 km) and less sensitive fire information — but they provide it every 15 minutes. They won't pick up very small fires — but as far as disaster management goes, those aren't the ones we're interested in.
The problem for fire management then, is how to get this information into the hands of disaster managers, firefighters, farmers and forest managers who need warnings of where a fire is, and where it's heading.
In South Africa, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has developed the Advanced Fire Information System (AFIS) to do just this. The system combines satellite data with mobile phone technology to provide crucial early warnings.
It uses both MODIS and Meteosat data to detect hotspots, compares these with background temperatures to filter out non-fires (such as chimney stacks) and uses wind vector information to work out the trajectory of active fires. It then automatically alerts people via email and text message.
AFIS was originally developed for Eskom — South Africa's largest power company — to help combat line faults caused by fires. But since 2007 it has also been used to improve broader fire-fighting efforts. For example, it sends alerts to more than 40 fire protection associations across the country and forms part of the weekly weather forecast on national television.
Online map with bushfire information for Australia
The following map combines information from Satellites (MODIS hotspots) with RSS feeds from local fire authorities to present a timely picture of bushfire incidents across Australia
Bushfire indidents on Hazards Monitor