27.07.23 - Visualizing Wildfires: ESA's Satellite-Based Fire Monitoring

In recent weeks, several countries around the world have experienced wildfires. Detecting and monitoring them is an important part of fire-fighting and planning safety measures.

The European Space Agency - ESA has published an application example for visualizing the current wildfire on the Greek island of Rhodes using an acquisition from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. Red, blue, green and short-wave infrared bands have been processed and combined to highlight the fire front. The burnt area has also been identified, and the corresponding surface area has been estimated at 11’000 hectares according to the July 23 acquisition. 

In addition, for this wildfire, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service Rapid Mapping has been activated and supports the fight by providing a rough estimate of the extent of the existing wildfire and damaged areas. The almost daily report on the state of the fire is based not only on Sentinel-2 mission, which has a temporal coverage of six days, but also on other satellites. 
Situation maps with the data sources mentioned are available here: 
https://lnkd.in/ej9w4W9v

#remotesensing #wildfires #satellite #earthobservation

Image credit : European Space Agency