Remote Sensing in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)

(National Institute of Standards and Technology Fire Research Grant 60NANB11D173)

Remote sensing is an important measurement technique for identifying key characteristics of the Fire Disturbance Continuum in WUI and wildland environments.  Remote sensing has been used to assess vegetative characteristics of pre-fire and post-fire WUI and wildland environments (Maranghides et al., 2013; Maranghides et al., 2015).  Assessment of WUI and wildland fire behavior can also be assessed using remote sensing techniques (Maranghides et al., 2015).  Finally, remote sensing has been used to assess post-fire effects (Lentile et al., 2006). 

Remote sensing has a number of advantages for assessment of WUI and wildland environments including:

• Providing a permanent record that can be re-evaluated as new knowledge is made available.
• Facilitating documentation of a large scene.
  
• Allowing for comparison of different temporal periods present in the Fire Disturbance Continuum.
• Enabling multiple applications from one remotely sensed image.
• Accommodating rapid processing of data through automation of image analysis techniques.
• Presenting an unobstructed measurement technique in many cases.
• Giving a common understanding of the WUI or wildland environment to first responders for safe and effective response to the incident.
• Serving as the only method to continuously, in terms of spatial measurements, obtain data from inaccessible environments such as an active fire.
• Affording a possible solution when detailed ground surveys are not possible.

There are also disadvantages to remote sensing for assessment of WUI and wildland environments including:

• Prohibitively expensive for small areas or one time use.
• Requires specialized training for full exploitation.
• Necessitates rigor in acquisition as system calibration is required.
• Possibly intrusive if certain sensors are used.
• Presents possibility of human error in data acquisition and image analysis.
• Acquisition in all environments is not always possible (e.g. smoke, clouds, night, etc...).
• Occlusion of features can occur (e.g. buildings under dense canopy might not be sensed).

It must also be remembered that, in many cases, remote sensing will require ground data for accuracy assessments and to build relationships between remotely sensed measurements and extracted phenomena (e.g vegetation fuel load from LIDAR). 

Remote sensing techniques are also essential to deriving fire model inputs and fire model validation data sets.  Both empirical and physics-based fire models require continuous inputs of fuels, terrain and boundary conditions representing meteorological conditions present in the area.  Remote sensing provides the only means for acquiring some of this information over large areas for landscape scale modeling.  Nonetheless, as demonstrated at the Camp Swift Research Burns, field measurements of wind, fuels fire behavior and other information is still required for validation of fire models. This project utilized remote sensing for assessment of WUI and wildland environments for all aspects of the Fire Disturbance Continuum.