DLR’s “ZKI Fire Monitoring System” provides up-to-date wildfire information for Europe for the last 31 days. Aiming at monitoring burnt areas and their spatial development in near-real time, a fully automated approach was developed (Nolde et al. 2020, link to publication https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12132162) and implemented in an operational processing chain. To achieve several updates per day, mid-resolution satellite data are used. The information system allows an interactive analysis of current wildfires in any area of interest defined by a user.
The daily research products show the perimeters of burnt areas, minutes after satellite imagery becomes available. For MODIS, the data reception is operated by DLR’s ground stations in Neustrelitz and Oberpfaffenhofen (Germany) using direct broadcast during each satellite overpass. For Copernicus Sentinel-3 data, we rely on the data distribution mechanism by European Space Agency’s Sentinel Open Access Hub and the Copernicus Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS).
The burnt area research products are iteratively and automatically updated over a period of 10 days as new satellite data becomes available. This enables continuous improvement of the derived fire perimeters by minimizing the influence of disturbing factors such as cloud cover, smoke plumes and shadows.
Beside the burnt area perimeter, other attributes such as the fire severity, the area affected, as well as the exact detection times are included in the data. It is therefore possible to track the evolution of each burnt area in space and time.
