Written by Tony Malkovic Wednesday, 24 January 2007 19:22
THE innovative system of using satellite images to fight bushfires across Western Australia is now being adapted to help manage another natural disaster – floods.
Pinpointing fires and flood from space ... a FireWatch image shows the path of smoke from bushfires in the Perth hills in 2005 drifting out to sea and then curling back to again cross the coast. (Image: MODIS satellite/Landgate)Every year, bushfires across Australia reduce hundreds of thousands of hectares of land to ash, endanger lives, destroy homes and property, and kill native animals and livestock.
In Western Australia, the FireWatch program is helping control the threat of bushfires in a vast landscape of 2.5 million square kilometres that would otherwise be unmanageable.
The web-based system relies on images transmitted by 10 satellites that circle the earth every 90 minutes, orbiting some 800 kilometres overhead.
"They weigh about one to two tonnes, which is about the size of a normal car, with large wings that are solar panels," explains FireWatch's Ron Craig.
Craig is the senior research officer at the Satellite Remote Sensing Services unit that is part of Landgate (formerly the Department of Land Information), which runs FireWatch.
"We have two satellite receiving stations here in Perth, one at Curtin University and one at Murdoch University," he says.
"The data is provided through the Internet onto computers at [the unit's office in] Floreat, and is then pulled apart and put back together again as pictures."
The pictures, with a resolution of 250m, are further processed to detect fire hotspots in fire-affected areas, and the continually updated images are then made available to users on the FireWatch website.
Regular users include government clients, such as FESA (Fire and Emergency Services Authority) and the Department of Environment and Conservation; general land managers such as large pastoral and mining companies; and the public.
"On the FireWatch website today, the main features of the last week or so have been the fires in Victoria, which are very visible because we have access to the receiving station in Melbourne," says Craig.
"We have data interchange programs with other satellite receiving stations around Australia, and as a result we can cover from the middle of the Indian Ocean to half-way across the Pacific, from the Philippines down to the Antarctic."
Across Western Australia, the satellite images are used to determine which way fires are heading and where to send fire-fighting crews, or to simply keep an eye on a long-term blaze that might be out of control.
"Fires, particularly in the tropical north of WA, the Northern Territory, and far north Queensland can burn for two or three months, on 20 to 30 kilometre fronts," Craig explains.
"They might be ignited in June, and then burn through until October or November, just trickling through the landscape causing a fire scar to appear behind them.
"We monitor them to help FESA decide if they're going to put back burns in, or grow tracks, or move people depending on what the situation is."
The FireWatch unit is based at the Leeuwin Centre in Floreat in suburban Perth. In effect, it allows emergency services personnel to manage an outback bushfire while working from an office thousands of kilometres away.
"That happens quite a lot in places like the Pilbara and the Kimberley where the fire fighting might be done more by managing stock and managing people than by stopping the fire itself," Craig says.
"For instance, there was one fire in the Cape Arid National Park in the south of the State where people in Albany were able to look at the FireWatch website.
"By monitoring the images, they found they didn't have to move people and equipment because the fire was due to burn into an area where it would no longer be able to burn due to a lack of fuel. So a fair bit of money was saved in hiring equipment, travel, and possibly exposing people to danger."
That early warning feature of FireWatch is now being adapted to help regional communities escape the ravages of floods.
FloodMap is a joint project between Landgate, the Bureau of Meteorology, FESA, and the Department of Water.
In WA, much of the flooding that affects towns such as Kalbarri and Carnarvon is caused by steadily rising rivers.
"A typical situation is a that a flood might be a headwater coming down two days before it gets to the town," says Craig. "So you've got a couple of days before you have to make a decision if you know the flood's coming.
"But if no-one's monitoring it, you see it arrive that hour, rather than two days before.
"With FloodMap, the satellites provide us with a number of shots each day of the width of the river and where the head point of the flood is, which can assist those people who are working together to provide a better response to the flood events for the people of WA."
While the year-old project is still being trialled it is hoped it will have the same success as FireWatch.
"The [FireWatch] service is probably a world leader in the way it can deliver information in format that people can see and use in the regions rather than just to government bodies," says Craig.
FireWatch images can be viewed at www.firewatch.landgate.wa.gov.au. Access is free but viewing restrictions apply unless you are a subscriber.
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