Capacities of the different free available remote sensing data for the wildfire emergency management: a case study of Borjomi, Georgia

Abstract

The main goal of this research study is to show the capacities of the different free available remote sensing data to detect, monitor fire and map burned area for the wildfire emergency management. This goal was applied for a case study from the 20 to 26 august 2017 borjomi area, georgia wildfires. All free available remote sensing data from different missions such as suomi npp/viirs, terra, aqua/modis, sentinel-1, 2, 3, landsat-8 and aster were considered and techniques based on thresholding the spectral indices as normalized burned ratio of the optical data and backscatter of the radar data were applied in this research study to detect, monitor fire activity and to estimate burned areas. Multitemporal series of burned area were used to identify wildfire distribution in space and time. Results showed a total burned area is around 726 hectares for this case study. This paper highlights that the utilization of these various remote sensing data complement each other in time and space and contribute to the effectiveness of the detection and monitoring of wildfire extension and of the burned area estimation. At the same time, this research study shown that the different remote sensing data can show uncertain burned area at first sight due to the different resolution or/and acquisition time for a fast developing process like a wildfire. Furthermore, the limitations of the using these various remote sensing data for the wildfire emergency management will be extensively discussed.