
Time is ripe for fire detection satellite, say Berkeley scientists - PaulHoule
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/10/22/time-is-ripe-for-fire-detection-satellite/
======
HorizonXP
While a satellite would provide continuous coverage over the area of interest,
I'm curious to know if it's upfront cost of "several hundred million dollars"
couldn't be better spent on continual coverage with UAVs during the summer
months and daylight hours.

Just a thought, I could be totally off base here. I'm just not seeing the
inherent advantage of a satellite, especially given the cost.

~~~
001sky
The other issue is repsonse times. Many of the responders are volunteers and
the areas are inaccessible. The notion that there will be a 15 minute response
time to something like the rim-fire is quite naive.

Second, the experience of the SD (Cedar) fires which I believe are still the
worst in the state of CA [1] this system would likewise be irrelevant. That
fire was well known for some time, but other decisions and resource
constraints (including legal/policy directives) forced the fire to be triaged
in a secondary rank.

I hate to be cynical, but this project really seems like a solution and a
grant-money funnel looking for a problem and a pile of cash. The "several
hundred millon dollar" pricetag would be better spend on prevention,
education, and support of additiona fire-fighting infrastructure. Including
preventive maintenace for things like controlled burns, etc.

The notion that we need 200-400 million dollars flying overhead to fight fires
caused by trivial mis-behaviour is also astonishing. These fires are often set
by _people_ doing things like spilling over an alcohol stove, setting an
emergency signal, or doing some other trivial but mis-guided task.

That all being said, the amount of CA forest land that has burned throughout
the state in the past 10 years is _absolutely insane_. I'd encourage people to
actively work towards solutions to the general problem.

[1]
[http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/...](http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/20LACRES.pdf)

~~~
bjterry
We are probably close to the point of diminishing returns on education and
prevention, given people's limited attention spans, the time dedicated to
reading warning messages, already prominent notices when you go to campsites,
and limitations on human intellect/awareness/abilities. "According to the Ad
Council, Smokey Bear and his message are recognized by 95% of adults and 77%
of children."[1]

The cost of fighting the Rim Fire was $127 million dollars[2], and that
doesn't include some much smaller cost to repair the damages it caused (cited
to be in the tens of millions by "experts"). The Cedar Fire cost $32 million
in firefighting plus 15 lives and 2800 structures. The Zaca Fire cost $117
million to fight. From my perspective it's just a mathematical question
whether it would be cheaper to put a satellite in the air vs. other mitigation
strategies, and what the cost would be over the lifespan of the satellite for
accelerated response vs. typical response. If we plug in the expected value of
$200 million in additional funding to awareness I think we will be
dissatisfied with the results.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Bear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Bear)

2:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rim_Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rim_Fire)

3:
[http://interwork.sdsu.edu/fire/resources/fire_facts.htm](http://interwork.sdsu.edu/fire/resources/fire_facts.htm)

4:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaca_Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaca_Fire)

~~~
001sky
I think the analytical approach is a good one, but I'm not sure the results
are as simple as you imply, or have the result you may be led to believe. The
damages of the Rim and Zaca fires were large, but the question is could the
system actually prevent the ignition of the fire and decrease the costs of
containment. In both of those cases, the answer to the former is <no> and to
the latter is <unlikely>.

_________________

The Yosemite Rim Fire was man-made and had outsize damages because of
inaccesibility and bad policy. Viz:

 _The fire was caused by a hunter 's illegal fire that went out of control_

 _The blaze was difficult to fight because of inaccessible terrain and erratic
winds, forcing firefighters to be reactive_

 _Also contributing to the fire was a pre-1980s policy of suppressing small
natural fires. The lack of those fires created nearly a century 's worth of
fuel to burn, resulting in a massive forest fire killing virtually all plant
life in its path._

 _A widespread heat wave and drought conditions helped to spread the fire and
make it difficult to combat._

_________

It takes hours if not days to get men and supplies into some of these
locations. On the flip side, the grow _very, very quickly_. Lets look at the
Rim Fire:

 _Only 40 acres when it was discovered, it grew to 10,000 acres within 36
hours and 100,000 acres after four days._

The premise that a fire is like an ICBM launch that can be shot down before it
explodes via star-wars is flawed. Its the sort of thing that people in Ivory
towers believe to make themselves feel better. Which is fine, but its not
clear at all that such a mindset correlates with reality.

Lets look at the Zaca Fire:

______________

 _The Zaca Fire was a wildfire which began burning northeast of Buellton,
California, in Santa Barbara County, California. The fire started on July 4,
2007, and by August 31, it had burned over 240,207 acres (972.083 km2), making
it California 's second largest fire in recorded history after the Cedar Fire
of 2003.[1][2] The fire was 100% contained on September 2, 2007.[3] It was
declared controlled on October 29, 2007.[4]

The fire was started as a result of sparks from a grinding machine on private
property which was being used to repair a water pipe._

______________

Again, man made fire. People doing stupid things. Entirely preventable. On the
flip side, would the Bird save any money by early warning? Highly unlikely.
There was no delay in getting at this other than it being called in. So, you
would not save any material amount on this.

The order of magnitude of cost savings would appear to be perhaps 1/10 of the
actual cost, not 100/100\. So, in this case, perhaps you save $12MM on the Rim
Fire ans $11MM on the Zaca fire. So, for these two events you save $20MM. At a
cost of 200-400 million, you would need to incure 10x to 20x of these large
scale fires. But this case would be devastating, if ever incurred. So using it
as a rational backdrop seems off. If we are really expecting that, we should
adopt strategies of prevention and fuel mitigation as much if not more-so than
early warning.

~~~
maxerickson
Your dismissal of an earlier response to the rim fire sort of depends on how
long it took to get to 40 acres. I imagine it wasn't that long, but it
matters.

Also, there are thousands of wildfires each year. There is plenty of
opportunity to scrape payback out a little at a time, no need for dozens of
major incidents.

(I don't have strong feelings about whether such a satellite makes sense, but
with early detection capability, maybe it makes sense to increase the
capability to drop suppressant on short notice, and so on.)

~~~
001sky
Fair points, but I think the important takeaway is that $100mm per fire in
<savings> is incredibly flawed. The flipside is if you save $1-2mm/per fire,
you'd almost be encouraging fires (100-200?) in order to see a positive ROI.
As a practical matter, many of these fires cannot be put out once started,
they can only be contained. (You don't just drive in a truck and shoot water
out of a hose). The methods of containment are not fast, and they don't work
all that well in areas like the Yosemite backcountry. There are other
political issues involved. For example, the inability to use machinery in a
Wilderness Area. Without taking a position on the logic of that restriction,
consider the practical effects. Removal of fuel, lack of fire roads, walk-in
only access, etc.

Empirically, its common for fires that _start in very populated areas_ to
still be incredibly damaging. Early warning in these areas does not seem it
will materially alter the situation on the ground. Take for example the
Powerhouse fire earlier this year in LA. [1] That was visible to the naked eye
almost immediately. But the are is a dry, high-desert tinderbox. Ground zero
was immediately next to the local San Francisquito <fire station>, yer it took
11 days to contain, and burned 30,000 acres despite its immediate alarm and
proximity to roads and fire-fighting gear.

The Yosemite back-country is far more inaccessible and has far more fuel below
tree level that the area around the powerhouse fire. I think the notion that
once started it could have been contained in under 24 hours to be almost
implausible. And once it reached 40 acres, we saw what happened next. Just as
a sanity check, Assuming it was 20 miles in to start, it would take 2 days to
walk to the area from the nearest road. You will not be dropping in smoke-
jumpers like navy seals into this terrain in the middle of the night. Its
steep, rugged, and when its not is densley forested. The nearest meadow may be
in the next canyon.

In any event, it would be interesting to thing about what we would do with
such a system if it were in place. Let's say that we got if for FREE. Then
think about the next 200 million of infrastructre that would be required to
actually put out the fires more quickly. My guess is that doing this
logistical exercise would be more the bottleneck than the actual alert time.
The prevelance of cell phones, sat-phones, epirb beacons, and Spot devices
greatly increases the ability to comuunicate <SOS>. They do not make it very
quick to get help, however. The benhcmark is 24-48 hours at a minimum if you
are in a remote area, even with a Helo in many cases.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/06/the-terrible-
beau...](http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/06/the-terrible-beauty-of-
californias-powerhouse-fire/100527/)

[2] The fire station is on the road in the middle of this image of the fire:

[https://d2aoguav525b8o.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/re...](https://d2aoguav525b8o.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/resize/images/PowerHouse_Fire_Google_Maps-405x280.png)

------
brianbreslin
Lol their acronym is FUEGO for the project (Spanish for fire). I swear these
people think up an acronym first and work backwards...

~~~
nwh
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym)

------
mturmon
A very similar system has been developed and deployed already (10 years ago),
but not using a dedicated satellite:
[http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2003-113](http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2003-113)

It's too bad the investigators are unaware of prior work.

~~~
stevenrace
I had the same thought, but apparently the resolution is 'only' 1000 meters
[1]. Additionally, it revolves the Earth in ~2 days - making early warning
kinda hard.

As for similar sensor packages - some 'Satellite-Derived Sea Surface
Temperatures' [2] are collected hourly and could get around the time issue.
Resolution ranges from 1 to 8km. Then there are things up there from the NRO,
DoD, etc which likely aren't as friendly with data sharing...

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MODIS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MODIS)

[2]
[http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/newSST/GOES_SST.shtml](http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/newSST/GOES_SST.shtml)

~~~
mturmon
Its resolution is lower, but OTOH, it is an operational system ;-)

[http://sensorweb.nasa.gov/new/validationReport/IEEE-
SMC-2005...](http://sensorweb.nasa.gov/new/validationReport/IEEE-
SMC-2005-Sensorweb-v04.pdf) (section 4)

~~~
stevenrace
Agreed.

I wish the article was more clear what advances the Berkeley folks have come
up with. They claim a theoretical 3 meter resolution compared to the 'next-
gen' sensor package (VIIRS [1]) at 750 meters.

[1] [http://npp.gsfc.nasa.gov/viirs.html](http://npp.gsfc.nasa.gov/viirs.html)
[http://collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca/science/rpn/SEM/dossiers/2...](http://collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca/science/rpn/SEM/dossiers/2012/seminaires/2012-11-23/Seminar_2012-11-23_Alexander_Trishchenko.pdf)

~~~
7952
Is the resolution 3m or can they detect a 3m x 3m fire? That kind of
resolution seems unlikely from such a high orbit.

~~~
mturmon
I had the same question. From "Table 1" of the linked article, they have 72m X
72m pixels, and they are trying to detect a 3m X 3m fire (burning at 1100K)
within that pixel.

To bring up a related matter, it seems like they are not proposing to do the
detection on-board (see section 2.2.2, where they talk about a database of
past images). If they are not, they have to transfer all the data to ground.
The data rate can be very demanding (and the high orbit makes it more so).
Accurate pointing will be another issue (high orbit, small pixels). They have
a longer way to go than the press release indicates.

Notwithstanding all this griping, it's an interesting concept.

------
qwerta
Are not fires natural? Sequoia trees need fires to reproduce. Highly efficient
fire-fighting methods creates timing bomb, as more and more material
accumulates.

