Impact case study database

With wildfires posing an increasing threat to both our climate and human life, agencies around the world have come to understand the societal importance of having good information about the occurrence and scale of burning. Carried out in close collaboration with satellite developers around the world, King’s research enabling improved assessment of Fire Radiative Power (FRP) has had major impacts on the specification and design of space-based instruments. This, in turn, has enhanced the capacity of international operational agencies to use satellite data to map, quantify and monitor global wildfires in near-real-time for better wildfire management and response.

A. Influencing the specification and design of space-based instruments

The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is an intergovernmental organisation of 30 member states established to maintain and exploit European operational meteorological satellite systems. EUMETSAT is responsible for the commissioning and operation of these satellites and for delivering the satellite data and derived products to end-users. King’s researchers have worked closely with EUMETSAT’s Land Surface Analysis Satellite Application Facility (LSA SAF) which is responsible for developing and implementing algorithms that allow operational use of data from EUMETSAT’s second generation Meteosat satellites. According to Dr Isobel Trigo, the LSA SAF Project Manager, King’s research has had a “very significant, indeed vital, impact on the fire products issued by the LSA SAF” [A]. This includes the ‘FRP-Pixel’ product, based on [2] and [4], which records information on the location, timing and FRP output of landscape fires detected in almost real-time across much of the Earth [B]. King’s research [4] has further informed the design and development of the new third generation Meteosat satellite, by specifying the saturation temperature of its Middle Infrared band which will enable it to better detect smaller (lower-temperature) fires while still capturing larger fire events [A]. This satellite is currently in the test stages and due to be launched in 2022.

Furthermore, King’s researchers have been part of the Sentinel-3 Mission Performance Team of the European Space Agency (ESA). Here, their fundamental research [5] and recommendations have had significant impact on the specifications of the SLSTR instrument onboard Europe’s Sentinel-3 satellites, which detect and quantify the FRP of fires burning across the entire earth [C]. Based on [5], King’s researchers were also responsible for designing the algorithm that continually processes SLSTR data at ESA and is used to provide the final publicly available fire information. Dr Steffen Dransfeld, the ESA Sentinel-3 Optical Data Quality Manager, explains that the algorithm description and prototype software developed by King’s researchers was “used by ESA and its contractors to develop the fully operational software which now runs 24/7 in the Sentinel-3 Instrument Processing Facility and which processes the ‘raw’ data collected by SLSTR into global information on active fire location and FRP…. Without this code the satellite would not provide any information useful for this fire application [FRP]” [C].

Working with the Canadian Forest Service, King’s researchers have also influenced the development of WildFireSat, the world’s first dedicated and operational wildfire monitoring satellite. Dr Joshua Johnston, Forest Fire Research Scientist at the Canadian Forest Service, explains that the Mission Requirements Document [D], “upon which the mission is being designed, has been overwhelmingly influenced by [King’s] research” [E]. Specifically, the WildFireSat spectral band requirements were influenced by King’s work on detection and characterisation [2,3,5], while several of the fire products developed by King’s [2,5,6] supported the overall viability of satellite wildfire monitoring for emergency management [E]. Uniquely, WildFireSat has been designed specifically to monitor wildfires, with the intention of delivering near-real-time tactical intelligence to emergency responders. Given the high costs of wildfires to the economy in terms of smoke-based health impacts, economic shutdowns, evacuations, and the cost of suppression, Dr Johnston reports that WildFireSat is expected to “save our economy about CAD5.2 billion over its 5-year mission life” [E].

B. Facilitating operational use of satellite fire data

The significance of King’s research in making high resolution fire data available in a more timely and easily accessible fashion is illustrated by operational use of the data to detect fire risk, monitor wildfire activity and enable air quality warning systems.

(i) Creating fire risk detection products

Dr Isobel Trigo, the LSA SAF Project Manager highlighted that “the geostationary FRP products are vital inputs into the LSA SAF Fire Risk product, which for Southern Europe and North Africa provides an index of fire risk based on combined use of meteorological observations, weather forecast model outputs and remote sensing data. This Fire Risk product is used currently by agencies across southern Europe, including the Portuguese National Civil Protection Authority, to forewarn of periods and locations experiencing conditions of extreme landscape vulnerability to fire” [A].

(ii) Improving fire monitoring and response operations

King’s research has been pivotal to the development of the Canadian Forest Service’s monitoring of wildfires. In Canada, wildfires burn on average 17,000km² of forest annually, impacting humans through both poor air quality and damage to infrastructure. Taking appropriate action used to be difficult as the official active fire products produced by the GOES-16 satellite operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were considered “unusable operationally due to the extreme numbers of false positives (i.e. false alarms that are not real fires)” [E]. However, by writing geostationary active fire algorithms that were applied to the GOES-16 satellite data stream, King’s research [2,3] led to a “dramatic improvement” in the quality of fire detections [E]. As noted by Dr Johnston, Forest Fire Research Scientist, “your innovative approach to the GOES-16 algorithm has unlocked the use of this state-of-the-art system for scientific and emergency management in Canada” [E]. The GOES-16 satellite now delivers real-time data for use in the Consolidated Fire Detection and Monitoring System of the Canadian Forest Service, providing rapid response fire locations for fire management and fire response services [E]. Critically, the higher-quality data obtained by applying the King’s algorithms also allows monitoring of wildfire activity throughout the burn period at lower latitudes where most citizens live [E].

(iii) Enabling early warning systems for poor air quality

Fully operational since 2015, the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) provides the public and decision-makers with global monitoring of atmospheric composition as well as detailed air quality forecasts [C]. To do this, CAMS operates a Global Fire Assimilation System (GFAS), the development of which is now led by King’s researchers [F,H]. Built on the FRP approach and its relationship to fuel consumption and fire emissions [1], GFAS provides an estimate of smoke emissions from all satellite-detected wildfires burning around the planet [C,F]. Dr Mark Parrington, Senior Scientist at CAMS explains that GFAS is key to enabling users to integrate hourly (rather than daily) information about fire emissions into air quality early warning systems, a critical feature given that fires show strong diurnal cycles with emissions varying significantly over the day [H].

By 2019, CAMS GFAS data had 956 global users, with 369 from non-research entities, who were using GFAS outputs directly to bring fire emissions into their own air quality early warning systems [H]. One significant user is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC), who provide monitoring and early warning of smoke pollution coming from peat, forest and agricultural burning across Southeast Asia to the ten ASEAN nation states [H]. Dr Parrington explains that, “by having early warning of forthcoming poor air quality, the nations are able to take action to try to minimise the exposure of their populations to the severe air pollution that can result from the fires, for example closing schools, delaying or stopping sporting events, and arranging flights at airports so they do not operate in very low visibility conditions” [H].

The CAMS global and European forecasts now reach, directly or indirectly, a global audience of hundreds of millions of people. For example, leading news media such as Euronews and CNN International, and apps such as windy.com (with more than 3,500,000 unique users worldwide since June 2019 [G]), use CAMS data to provide the public with air quality information, enabling those with pre-existing health conditions such as asthma to take precautionary actions at times of forecast poor air quality [H].