Land and Water Link
April 2003
Sentinel Hotspots Helps Firefighters Track Australian Bushfires
A new and quicker way to 'track' bushfires conceived by a CSIRO Land and
Water team has won widespread praise from emergency service managers around
Australia, in what was literally a baptism of fire.
The Internet-based satellite mapping system called Sentinel Hotspots,
was developed with collaboration from Geoscience
Australia and funding from the Defence
Imagery and Geospatial Organisation (DIGO). Launched during the 2002–03
fire season, the system gave fire fighting organisations across Australia
a new management tool to identify fire 'hotspots' and help allocate resources
where they were most needed.
CSIRO team leader, Dr Alex Held, explains the significance of the breakthrough:
'Before the creation of Sentinel Hotspots, emergency services in
Australia (with the exception of Western Australia and the Northern Territory)
relied on "eye-witness" reports from people in vehicles, fire
towers or spotter planes and helicopters to pinpoint the location, extent
and rate of spread.
''Reports were not always reliable or even available. For example, there
was often no information in remote areas, or when planes and helicopters
were grounded due to thick smoke or high winds.'
With the launch of Sentinel Hotspots, there are now more reliable
'eyes' in the sky. Thanks to data provided free-of-charge by NASA
satellites, Sentinel Hotspots uses satellite images as the basis
for a system that has the fastest turnaround of satellite data for bushfire
tracking in the world.
Sentinel Hotspots can be used by the public as well as emergency
service personnel. It can be accessed by anyone with a computer linked
to the Internet.
Users see satellite 'snapshots' of the latest fire hotspots across all
of Australia. They can create and print out maps of their local hotspot
locations at a neighbourhood scale. Sentinel Hotspots can give
detailed locations of hotspots to an accuracy of about 1.5 kilometres
within an hour of the satellite's overpass. These maps can even be customised
to show information such as topography, roads, streams, reservoirs and
airports.
'Behind the scenes', explains Dr Held, 'the hotspot images are updated
three to four times a day using data from NASA satellites, which are received
by Geoscience Australia and processed to create surface temperature imagery.'
The Australian system, fashioned after a similar system operated by the
US Geological Survey, was designed to be much faster – to make it
a practical planning and operational tool for emergency services.
'We first conceived the vision of delivering satellite-detected hotspots
via the web in the summer of 2001 – 02, when severe bush fires swept
though New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory', says Held.
At the time the Australian Defence Force, which provides fire-fighting
assistance in this type of emergency, identified a pressing need for a
near-real-time, fire-mapping system to support daily strategic and logistical
decision-making by state and federal agencies. Realising that rapid access
to satellite data was the critical factor, DIGO commissioned CSIRO Land
and Water to develop a prototype system.
Alex Held and the CSIRO team including Peter Dyce, Alan Marks and Garry
Swan, worked with collaborators from Geoscience Australia between March
and November to put in place a system that would be ready for the next
fire season. In late 2002 the pilot system was unveiled to most state
and territory emergency service agencies. Peter Dyce and Alan Marks then
worked 'hands-on' with these agencies to fine-tune the website to meet
their needs.
Immediately after its official launch on 15 January 2003 by the Minister
for Science the Hon Peter McGauran – a launch that took place in
Canberra under ominous smoke-filled skies – Sentinel Hotspots
confronted an unexpected real-life test. As fires assaulted Canberra,
the 'pilot' website was bombarded by firefighters, media and concerned
members of the public, all logging on to check the blazes.
Sentinel Hotspots' usage peaked on the 19 January when it hosted
more than 20,000 visits (1.6 million hits). The team from CSIRO worked
around the clock throughout the following week to keep their prototype
system operational.
As Peter Dyce says, 'Our next priority was to build a duplicate website
for the exclusive use of emergency services. This second site was up and
running by 24 January'.
Now that the danger has passed until next fire season, the Sentinel
Hotspots team, together with its partners and other interested government
agencies, is looking at how best to develop a more robust system to handle
very high usage during peak emergency times.
According to Alex Held, 'Discussions are underway to enhance the predictive
ability of Sentinel Hotspots through incorporation of other leading
CSIRO research, for example bushfire behaviour and wind prediction models'.
The CSIRO team is also investigating other potential applications, and
is considering approaches from overseas interests keen to set up similar
systems elsewhere.
NOTE: Early in 2005, Geoscience Australia
decided to host the operational Sentinel system
as a logical extension to its current remote
sensing activities.
Visit Sentinel Hotspots at http://sentinel.ga.gov.au/acres/sentinel/index.shtml
For further information, contact
Dr
Alex Held
Ph: 02 6246 5718
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