Fire season in California is becoming longer as warmer temperatures dry the landscape. As firefighters work to contain fires that threaten communities, their efforts are aided by FireMapper™, an innovative tool that provides critical information about a fire's location, direction, and intensity.
"At a glance the incident commander can see where the fire is headed, evaluate its intensity, and decide where to direct resources." - Phil Riggan, Pacific Southwest Research Station's Forest Fire Laboratory
FireMapper is the product of a research joint venture between Pacific Southwest Research Station and Space Instruments, Inc. It is a thermal imaging system integrated with a vegetative mapping system called ForestMapper and a shortwave camera. Weighing only 7 pounds, it is mounted on a Piper Navajo twin-engine aircraft and collects data as it is flown over the fire. This information can be displayed in near-real time on a handheld PC.
"At a glance the incident commander can see where the fire is headed, evaluate its intensity, and decide where to direct resources," said Phil Riggan, a key contributor based at Pacific Southwest Research Station's Forest Fire Laboratory in Riverside, Calif. The data are geographically referenced and have been interfaced with Google Earth; output can be viewed at www.fireimaging.com.
"Incident command teams are made up of people from lots of different areas. Now they all know where to go for data. And it's very easy to see which way the fire is moving," Riggan explained. The digital images and three-dimensional terrain maps for the California fires where FireMapper has been used are all in the public domain. "This lets the public check the status of a fire," said Riggan.
"This project initially began with a small business initiative grant," said Jim Hoffman, the owner of Space Instruments, based in Encinitas, Calif. "We've been working with Phil Riggan and the U.S Forest Service for 10 years. We designed and built all the hardware systems and Phil's people handled the data processing. They wrote the FireMapper tools that let the user scan through the data. It has been a very successful partnership."
Hoffman explained that FireMapper has several innovative features. Its microbolometer detectors operate as an "uncooled" system. Because it doesn't need liquid nitrogen or a refrigeration system to cool the detectors, FireMapper is lighter, less expensive, and easier to maintain than other types of thermal imaging systems. This technology was originally developed by the military for night vision equipment. Space Instruments was one of the first companies to develop a non-military use for it.
Another innovation is FireMapper's ability to penetrate smoke and accurately calibrate heat intensity up to 1200 degrees C. This information helps incident commanders identify spotfires that may grow in size and intensity and distinguish them from burned areas of still-warm ash. "We've never before had this kind of information about fire behavior," said Riggan.
The imaging and mapping technology also has other applications. "We market FireMapper and ForestMapper separately," explained Hoffman. "We use ForestMapper in Mexico to map endangered elephant seals on Guadalupe Island. The Brazilian government is using both FireMapper and ForestMapper in its efforts to protect the rain forest, and we've sold it to the Brazilian police, who are using it to fight illegal drug activity," said Hoffman.
More info: Rhonda Mazza, rmazza@fs.fed.us
FireMapper™ imaging of the Corral fire in Los Angeles County, Calif., at 10:49 PST on November 24, 2007 (Click image to enlarge)
