Using remote sensing and experimental innovation to understand, monitor and forecast wildfires

A wildfire in Thailand (Sippakorn Yamkasikorn via Unsplash)

Benefits

Solving problems

The work has revolutionised fire research techniques, directly informing European Commission monitoring programmes and the design of new satellite missions and equipment. This has included the implementation of the Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS) in the MACC and subsequent Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) projects. These use FRP models and observations to estimate wildfire emissions and scale; GFAS has been used worldwide to deliver forecasting and real-time monitoring of fires and emissions and air quality.

 

Better decisions

Dr Smith’s work on fire growth modelling was included in the National Fire Chief’s Council Fire Prevention Toolkit, helping inform best practice and fire prevention strategies in the UK.

Dr Smith and Professor Wooster also contributed to the FIREfficient project from 2014-2015, which drew together researchers from a number of European governments and institutions to develop tools for wildfire risk reduction.

This yielded a number of activities and tools and the Lessons on Fire knowledge exchange for practitioners in land management and fire services, with Dr Smith’s contributions including:

• Knowledge exchange workshops with fire services and land managers in the UK,

• Training materials and an integrated approach for risk assessment and land management.

• A new protocol for testing fire spread models

• For wildfire risk reduction

Results from Dr Smith’s work in tropical peatlands, in collaboration with Dr Stephanie Evers (Liverpool John Moores) was recently cited in the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil’s Best Management Practices for Oil Palm Cultivation on Peat, informing better land management decisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tropical peatland agriculture.

 

Boosting productivity and building capability

Professor Wooster’s research was incorporated into Meteosat satellites to provide novel remote sensing methods for assessing radiative power (PDF), and the data made available free in real-time from the EUMETSAT Land Satellite Applications Facility.

In 2019, King’s College London and Imperial College London were awarded £10m to establish a joint Wildfire Research Centre to focus collaborative geographical and interdisciplinary research on wildfires in four key areas – the urban interface, the North, the tropics, and global systems.

Dr Smith’s work on UK fires will contribute to a new £2m project on developing the components for a UK Fire Danger Rating System, while his research in tropical peatlands continues through a £3.4m international collaboration to improve the sustainable development of peatlands in Indonesian Borneo.