Combining AVHRR and ATSR satellite sensor data for operational boreal forest fire detection

Väinö Kelhä, Yrjö Rauste, Tuomas Häme, Tony Sephton, Alessandra Buongiorno, Olaf Frauenberger, Kristiina Soini, Ari Venäläinen, Jesus San Miguel-Ayanz, Taito Vainio

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    25 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The potential to combine data from two different satellite systems was studied to increase fire detection sensitivity and image acquisition frequency in real-time fire detection and fire control. A fully automatic fire detection algorithm was applied to all scenes that were acquired using both satellite systems. Local fire authorities were notified about each detected fire in their territory using real-time fire reports that were sent by telefax. The average time from the start of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) image acquisition until the sending of a telefax fire report was 25 min. During the straw-burning season in April 2000, the Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) instrument detected twice as many fires as the AVHRR per unit image area. The main reason for this may be the average resolution cell of the ATSR, which is half the size of that of the AVHRR in terms of area. The response from fire authorities was used to estimate the number of correct alerts and false alarms. A false alarm rate of 12% and 7% was obtained in the fire seasons of 1999 and 2000, respectively.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1691-1708
    Number of pages18
    JournalInternational Journal of Remote Sensing
    Volume24
    Issue number8
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2003
    MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

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