In arid places like California, wildfire season is known to occur in warmer, drier months. But with climate change, things have changed. “What was once a four-month fire season now lasts six to eight months,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. What’s worse: “Wildfires occur year-round in much of the United States.” United States”, which introduces the concept of “fire year“.
This sobering reality has inspired NASA to use its wealth of Earth-observing data to help wildfire management agencies predict and put out fires across the country. Much of that data comes from the agency’s Landsat satellites, which capture images of Earth’s terrain. They can also measure surface temperatures and gauge natural materials that serve as fuel for wildfires, such as dense trees or other vegetation that could spark and feed fires.
“We have an archive of satellite imagery data going back 40 years,” Christopher Potter, a research scientist at NASA Ames, tells me as we sit in a room on the space agency’s Silicon Valley campus. “That gives us a very rich data set to build predictive models.”
As wildfires become more frequent and severe, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and drones are being leveraged to help fight fires and keep first responders safe and informed. The California Air National Guard, for example, uses drones to track where fires are spreading and collect real-time images of disasters, as well as to identify areas that need resources. Response teams across the United States use software to predict fire movement several days into the future, helping firefighters fight those fires more effectively. And startups like Pano AI use cameras combined with algorithms to detect wildfires and alert customers, such as utilities, before the fires become too large. NASA, for its part, is using its wealth of data to build predictive models as well as airspace management tools to help drone pilots and agencies respond more effectively to disasters.
Along with Landsat data, NASA also draws on data collected by agencies like the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which tracks the severity of fires from previous years, including casualties and property destruction. Using machine learning, NASA can quickly create predictive models of wildfires and how they might spread, along with what the resulting damage might be. These projections can help firefighters delegate their resources.
Potter shows me East Bay Hills, in the San Francisco Bay area, as an example. Among the group of cities, including Concord, Fremont and Walnut Creek, various shades of red illustrate the density of buildings and therefore the areas most likely to emit massive amounts of dangerous gases if a fire were to break out there.
Using that data, along with information about when the last wildfires occurred in that area, agencies can predict how large and dangerous a fire will be. East Bay Hills is just one example, but NASA’s predictive models estimate that more than 247,000 acres and nearly 600,000 homes could be in the line of fire if that area were to burn.
“We can already say how much pollution would be emitted, what kind of harmful gases would be emitted and where,” Potter said. The agency can estimate this up to a few months in advance.
NASA wildfire data is available for anyone to consult. access online for free. The goal is for agencies like Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service to use these more accurate maps of high-risk fire spots to immediately know where to place their equipment as soon as something happens. That precision can make the difference when fighting massive fires.
“We’re not looking at whole sections of the state to get a prediction,” Potter says. “We’re looking at just a few miles.”
NASA’s mobile air traffic management kits can help first responders safely navigate firefighting drones.
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Improving communication between firefighting aircraft
NASA not only uses its research to predict wildfires, but also to help fight them.
Using drones, first responders can continue fighting fires even when it is unsafe to fly for traditional aircraft and pilots, such as at night or when there is heavy smoke. They can also conduct prescribed burns, which remove dead brush that acts as fuel during wildfires, without endangering crews. But there’s a challenge: It can be difficult for first responders to see where these drones are flying.
To solve the problem, NASA is developing airspace management technologies that can help manned aircraft, drone operators and ground crews track and share locations and transmit information to each other. The initiative is being carried out under NASA’s Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations (STEEL) project. This allows response teams to receive more timely and accurate information and make faster decisions during emergency response.
“Most communication is done over radio, and most wildfires happen where there’s no cellular service,” says Kathryn Chapman, a researcher at NASA Ames. “It makes it much harder for different first responders to talk to each other and even know where the fire is… We have this opportunity to start trying to use technology to fill that gap.”
NASA built what it calls mobile air traffic management kits, which can help first responders visualize traffic, including the altitude and location of a plane. That makes it safer to deploy drones and ensure they don’t come into contact with anything else in the sky.
The kit I saw consisted of a yellow plastic container with a lid and handles, about the size of a large briefcase. It was equipped with an ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) receiver to track aircraft, an iPad to display the location of local flights, and a power station.
The agency has been testing these kits with U.S. Forest Service pilots in Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, who used them during prescribed burns conducted by drones. The kits kept pilots informed about air traffic in the area and allowed them to more easily navigate the drones and conduct prescribed burns from a safe distance.
These airspace management technologies are still in development and will be tested in a series of flight demonstrations in low visibility areas, alongside members of the wildland firefighting community. This will help ensure that the technology can work successfully in real-life situations, which, unfortunately, are becoming more common.
“As the fires continue to get bigger and more intense,” Chapman says, “we’re giving people the tools to scale up their response.”
