Aerial Dervice Will Spot Tiny Forest Fires From Aircraft
Scientists at the University of Rochester are developing a new tool that could help the U.S. Forest Service identify and locate wildfires as small as eight to 12 inches in diameter from an altitude of 10,000 feet.
Funded by a $1.4 million grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the scientists are preparing a prototype of their new remote sensing system for trial.
The tool is a multispectral mapping system, which combines infrared and high resolution visible digital mapping cameras with a geographic positioning system, along with specially written software to operate the cameras and collect and interpret the data.
The suite of cameras will be mounted on a pointing mechanism on an aircraft and the cameras will snap images as they pivot back and forth, sweeping across the line of flight. Automated software will stitch the images into a mosaic and combine them spectrally to detect the presence of a fire.
Each camera will read a different spectral band. Three infrared cameras will detect heat in the shortwave, midwave and long wave bands of the spectrum, with a digital camera mapping the terrain in the visible spectrum.
According to Donald McKeown, one of the project’s directors, the combination of a mapping camera with three infrared cameras is “is not really being done by anyone else.”
McKewon expects the combination of cameras will allow the Forest Service to reliably detect fires with low false alarms even under bright sunlight, which normally reduces the effectiveness of current fire-detection systems.
Although it might not be ready to help the Forest Service during this year’s wildfire season, McKeown and his colleague Michael Richardson expect to have the system installed on an aircraft in June for flight testing, data collection, and system characterization and calibration.
Provided by theEnvironmental News Service.
