Automatic RST-based system for a rapid detection of fires

For years the use of remotely sensed data has been showing to be a suitable tool for detecting and monitoring forest fires thanks to the satellite possibility of surveying Earth surface at a global scale and supervising even inaccessible areas where traditional ground-based surveillance systems are not practicable. Anyway, a rapid and reliable satellite-based methodology for fire detection is required in order to provide an effective support to decision makers and local agencies in better managing ongoing events. Rapidity is desirable to assure that fire fighting teams could extinguish fires before they expand too much; reliability is necessary in order to guarantee that the solicited efforts are addressed to actual fires and not to false alarms. In this context, the combination of the Robust Satellite Technique (RST), able to identify such events with very high reliability, and satellite sensors with high temporal resolution seems to assure both a reliable and a timely detection of abrupt Middle Infrared (MIR) transients related to fires. The RST approach, based on a multi-temporal analysis of co-located satellite records, has already demonstrated good performances in many cases of applications. For the first time a Total Validation Approach (TVA) has been experimented in order to verify the actual presence and nature of thermal sources responsible for detected anomalies. TVA implementation was possible thanks to the collaboration with administrators, decision makers and local agencies, which made dedicated light aircraft surveys and voluntary teams available for direct ground observations, allowing us a systematic study of the origin of each hot spot identified by RST. Some remarkable cases from recent campaigns in Italy will be shown and discussed.