Utilising Available Data for Wildfire Related Services
Session: Fire prevention and preparedness
Presenters: Ignasi Porras (Risk Management, METEOSIM)
Conrad Bielski (EOXPLORE)
Gunter Zeug (Terranea)
Contact email: iporras@meteosim.com
We are a company specialised in meteorological and environmental services, which operates worldwide using the most advanced numerical modelling tools. Our main business areas are air quality, climate change, risk management and ocean studies.
The combination of our solid scientific background, our extensive meteorological knowledge and our client results improvement approach, enables us to create customised technology solutions that facilitate decision-making, both in terms of sustainability and operational excellence.
Link: www.meteosim.com
ABSTRACT: As part of the I-REACT project, several wildfire specific services were developed to improve different aspects of the emergency phases: prevention, preparedness and response. Three services will be presented in this context: wildfire monitoring innovations based on the Fire Weather Index (FWI), automated wildfire map requests and post-wildfire burned area mapping. All services are based on a variety of data sources and models including Earth observation imagery. The FWI is a weather based index providing information about the potential of wildfire across Europe. Using calibrated ensemble forecasts for the required parameters, two different forecasting models are used: GLAMEPS (52 members) and the ECMW-ENS (51 members) allowing the computation of three different statistics for both model data: minimum, maximum and mean values for all the FWI components. When a wildfire potential is high or already started, an authorised user can make a map request to produce a wildfire extend map. This can be enhanced by field knowledge provided through the I-REACT mobile application. Finally, after a wildfire disaster it is important to assess the damages by mapping burned areas. This can be automatically produced based on Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery. All three services have been integrated as part of the I-REACT system.
