In dry regions like California, wildfire season is known to occur during warm, dry months. But climate change has changed that. “Wildfire seasons that once lasted four months now last six to eight months,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture says. To make matters worse, “wildfires occur year-round in most of the United States.” This is where the concept of “wildfire” began. Year“
This grim reality has inspired NASA to use a wealth of data from Earth observation to help wildfire management agencies across the country predict and extinguish fires. Much of that data comes from NASA's Landsat satellites, which image the Earth's topography. The satellites can also measure surface temperatures and natural fuels that fuel wildfires, such as dense trees and other vegetation that can start and ignite fires.
“We have an archive of satellite image data that goes back 40 years,” Christopher Potter, a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, told me in a room on the space agency's Silicon Valley campus. “This gives us a very rich data set on which to build predictive models.”
As wildfires become more frequent and severe, emerging technologies like AI and drones are helping fight them and keep rescue workers safe and informed. The California Air National Guard, for example, is using drones to track the spread of fires and gather real-time images of the disaster, as well as pinpoint areas where resources are needed. Rescue agencies across the U.S. are deploying software that predicts fire movement days in advance, allowing firefighters to fight blazes more effectively. And startups like Pano AI are using cameras combined with algorithms to spot wildfires and alert customers, like utility companies, before the fires get too big. NASA is also using its vast amounts of data to build predictive models and airspace management tools to help drone pilots and agencies respond to disasters more effectively.
In addition to Landsat data, NASA also uses data collected by agencies such as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which tracks the severity of fires over the past few years, including deaths and injuries and property damage. Using machine learning, NASA can quickly create predictive models of wildfires, how they spread, and the resulting damage. These predictions can help firefighters better allocate resources.
As an example, Potter showed us the San Francisco Bay Area's East Bay Hills, where different shades of red in urban areas like Concord, Fremont and Walnut Creek represent areas with high building density, and therefore the areas most likely to release large amounts of dangerous gases if a fire were to break out here.
That data, along with information about when a wildfire last occurred in the region, allows officials to predict the size and danger of a blaze. The East Bay Hills is just one example, but a NASA model estimates that if the area were to burn, more than 247,000 acres and about 600,000 homes would be affected.
“We can already predict how much pollution is coming out of it, what types of toxic gases are going to be released, and where they're going to go,” Potter said, and the agency can make these predictions months in advance.
NASA's wildfire data is freely accessible to anyone online. The goal is to give agencies like Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service more accurate maps of high-risk fire areas so they know immediately where to place equipment as soon as a fire breaks out. This accuracy can make a big difference when fighting large blazes.
“We're not forecasting for an entire area of the state,” Potter said, “just a few miles.”
NASA's mobile air traffic control kit helps emergency responders safely operate firefighting drones.
Improving communications for firefighting aircraft
NASA is using its research to not only predict wildfires, but also solve them.
Drones allow firefighters to continue fighting fires at night or when smoke is too thick for traditional aircraft and pilots to fly. They can also carry out planned burns to remove dead trees that fuel wildfires without putting firefighters at risk. But there's a challenge: Firefighters can have trouble seeing where their drones are flying.
To solve this problem, NASA is developing airspace management technology to help manned aircraft, drone pilots, and ground crews track and share their locations and relay information to each other. This effort is part of NASA's Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations (ACERO) project, so responders can receive more timely and accurate information and make faster decisions during emergency responses.
“Most communication is done by radio, and most wildfires happen in places where there's no cell phone coverage,” said Katherine Chapman, a researcher at NASA Ames Research Center. “That makes it really hard for different emergency responders to communicate with each other and even know where the fire is. … We have an opportunity to start trying to use technology to fill that gap.”
NASA has developed what it calls a mobile air traffic management kit to help emergency responders visualize traffic conditions, including the altitude and location of planes, so they can deploy drones more safely and avoid coming into contact with other objects in the sky.
The kit I saw was a yellow plastic container with a lid and handle, about the size of a large briefcase, equipped with an ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) receiver for tracking aircraft, an iPad that displays local flight positions, and a power plant.
The agency has been testing these kits with U.S. Forest Service pilots in Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, who used them to conduct planned burns from drones. The kits allowed pilots to stay up to date on air traffic in the area, making it easier to navigate their drones and conduct planned burns from a safe distance.
These airspace management technologies are still in development and will be tested with members of the wildfire community in a series of flight demonstrations in low visibility areas to help ensure the technologies work in real-world conditions that are unfortunately becoming increasingly common.
“As the fires get bigger and more intense, we're giving people the tools to be able to scale up their response,” Chapman said.
