Initial Project Selections for FIRET-23

Updated 08/08/2024 – NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC has selected three proposals for the FireSense Technology Program (FIRET-23), under the 2023 solicitation (A.59 of the Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences onmibus announcement). FIRET is a technology development program managed by the Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) that seeks new, innovative Earth system observation capabilities to predict and manage wildfires and their impacts. These projects aim to develop new tools for monitoring extreme fire events and forecasting wildfire spread.

As this is a no due date program, future awards are expected, and this announcement will be updated. Abstracts for the three awards, which have a total dollar value of approximately $5.1M over three years, are as follows:

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Hot Spot: High-Resolution Real-Time Wildfire Detection, Mapping, and Communication Relay System with Persistent Broad-Area Coverage
Jared Leidich, Urban Sky Theory Inc.

As wildfires continue to surge in intensity and frequency, threatening communities and ecosystems, there is a pressing need for advanced detection and monitoring solutions. As wildfires change, so too must the technology solutions we use to sense and fight them. At the heart of this proposal lies the central objective: the development, advancement, and deployment of a cutting-edge sensor system for the overall management of wildfires.

Envision this system as a vigilant sentinel, floating high above in the stratosphere for days or weeks at a time, casting an expansive gaze over our forests. With its sharp eyes, it can detect the faintest glimmers of a nascent fire and monitor its every move, sending real-time data back to those who can combat the fire.

Our approach is anchored by two primary technical components:
High-Resolution Imaging: Our sensor’s distinct capability to capture vast areas at a rapid rate, approximately 3,000 acres per minute at a 3.5m resolution, ensures comprehensive monitoring. With its persistent operational ability, it can stay airborne for days, even weeks, either hovering over an active fire, moving between fires, or scouting areas at high risk for potential outbreaks.

Beyond just detection and mapping, our system will be outfitted with a mesh networked communication repeater and transmitter. This addition enables firefighters on the ground, often working in regions with sparse communication, to maintain connectivity, ensuring efficient coordination during firefighting operations. This communication will also provide the ability to send shape files outlining a fires location, generated by the imager, to firefighters in the field directly, providing a cutting-edge opportunity for firefighters to use a sensor tens of kilometers above them in the stratosphere to see the fire they are fighting in near real time.

Over 6 flights have been flown with early versions of the system to date, including comprehensive imaging of the Pass Wildfire in New Mexico. Our preliminary system has already demonstrated an ability to map and relay real-time data, emphasizing its potential when fully realized.

Addressing the objectives of the solicitation, our proposed system offers a transformative approach to wildfire detection, monitoring, and communication. As the climate crisis escalates and wildfires become an even more prominent challenge, timely and accurate data, coupled with effective communication, will be critical.

Our proposed system aligns with NASA’s commitment to harnessing advanced technologies to safeguard our planet and communities. With its unique blend of rapid, high-resolution imaging and communication capabilities, this system doesn’t just offer a solution; it promises a paradigm shift in how we confront and manage the wildfire challenge. Moreover, the system’s affordability and scalability make it a feasible solution for wide-scale deployment, amplifying its impact and offering a new paradigm where the entire expanse of at-risk or on-fire areas are monitored continuously.

In sum, as NASA continues its legacy of pushing the boundaries of what technology can achieve, our proposal stands as a beacon of innovation, directly addressing a pressing global challenge and exemplifying NASA’s broader vision for a safer, better-connected world.

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Near real-time updated wildfire risk map model informed by powerline fault status
Hamidreza Nazaripouya, Oklahoma State University

This project aims to enhance the pre-fire situational awareness for wildfires caused by power lines. The project represents a collaborative endeavor, uniting investigators from an academic institution and key stakeholder entities. These stakeholders encompass a fire department, the state forestry service, an electric utility, and an insurance company. Our team boasts expertise spanning diverse fields, including power system fault analysis, fire experimentation, ecology and wildfire modeling, wildland fire management, earth science and remote sensing, risk assessment, and emergency and protective services.

Furthermore, the team is bolstered by a network of collaborators drawn from targeted stakeholders, featuring another electric utility company, fire departments, and state and federal agencies involved in fire management, all of whom will contribute their valuable support to the project.

Failure in electrical infrastructure has regularly been ranked among the top identified causes of wildfires, and thus, effective wildfire risk assessment will increasingly depend upon systematically understanding the triggering mechanism of wildfires caused by electrical infrastructure. This project will develop an operational approach for determining the risk of electrical wildfires and updating wildfire danger rating in near-real time, via integration of ignition source data and higher resolution of fire danger biophysical factors (fuel conditions, fire weather, vegetation, and topography), all within a geospatial framework afforded by fine-resolution earth observing data. To this end, the project will 1) evolve the wildland fire potential map to satisfy the level of details needed for risk assessment of electrical wildfire. In particular, one of the novelties of this project is to improve existing fuel models by using fine spatial and temporal resolution multispectral data from PlanetScope CubeSats. Simultaneously, this project seeks to create novel AI-based fire danger indices that has the capacity to incorporate spatial information of fuel types as well as other high-resolution fuel properties, such as vegetation biomass, greenness, etc., 2) identify the ignition probability of vegetation electric faults. Another novelty in this project is to combine experimental fire ignition tests with power-hardware-in-the-loop grid simulation to understand the ignition dynamics and propagation patterns of ignition and non-ignition electrical faults across the gird under different ignition and environmental conditions. The unique and valuable dataset generated as part of these experiments will be used to identify the ignition probability as a new data product, leveraging machine learning techniques, and finally 3) advance wildfire risk mapping through an operational field demonstration, in collaboration with project collaborators, including utility companies and forest services, contributing to the FireSense field campaign mission.

This project advances biophysical data precision via fine-resolution PlanetScope data and deep learning, aligning with NASA’s “Science 2020-2024: A Vision for Scientific Excellence” and “Decadal Survey.”, emphasizing diverse data integration for wildfire solutions. The use of advanced machine learning on the uniquely generated vegetation electric faults dataset to obtain ignition probability and development of a custom wildfire potential model will help to fulfill NASA’s Earth Science Division’s mission to enhance US wildfire prediction and management via novel observations. The field demonstration in an operational environment aims to aid first responders with rapid, precise wildfire threat intel, reducing risks and costs, aligning with airborne field campaigns and the capstone mission, and NASA’s 2022 Strategic Plan for innovation in national challenges.

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Sediment Plumes and Blooms: Using Earth Observations and Modeling to Forecast Post-Fire impacts to Reservoir Water Quality and Quantity
Mary Miller, Michigan Technological University

Our primary goal is to improve forecasting and long-term monitoring tools for watershed managers dealing with post-fire hydrological impacts on critical watersheds and reservoirs.

Within the continental US, 67 of the 100 largest cities obtain their drinking water solely from surface sources. Thousands of smaller communities with limited budgets also rely on surface water. The majority of these headwater catchments are forested, some are in rangelands and grasslands ecosystems, and are subject to wildfires with droughts and past fire management policies causing an abundance of fuels. When wildfires occur, there is a high likelihood of impaired water quality (excess nitrogen, carbon and phosphorous), high sediment loads, increased stream temperatures, and suspended ash particles that are transported to water intakes and reservoirs. Dramatic increases in post-fire runoff, erosion and sedimentation is well documented. The loss of vegetation and forest litter results in decreased evapotranspiration and surface cover. Post-fire peak flows can be as high as 300 m3 s-1 km-2 resulting in catastrophic floods. Water utilities in watersheds recently impacted by wildfire are spending millions of dollars treating water supplies and dredging post-fire sediments that reduce vital water storage capacity. The cost of replacing the water treatment plant impacted by the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire in New Mexico is projected to be 145 million dollars.

In this step 1 proposal we will leverage MTRI’s hydrology, fire, and water sensing expertise to forecast and monitor threats from wildfire to water quality and quantity in the Western US. We propose three primary objectives. (1) We will identify reservoirs and watersheds at potential risk by merging fire detections and burn scars within reservoir watersheds. This analysis will be carried out for historical and current fires. Hydrological modeling of fire effects typically occurs shortly after the fire, however there is a growing interest and need for modeling watershed recovery as well. Field studies have shown the amount of surface cover after a wildfire is a dominant control on post-fire erosion rates under a given climatic regime. We will leverage both process-based models such as the Water Erosion Prediction Project in conjunction with the NASA developed Rapid Response Erosion Database along with empirical curve number models used by Burned Area Emergency Response teams on larger watersheds. Last summer our team collaborated with CALFIRE to create an ESRI toolbox capable of rapidly creating inputs to over a dozen empirical post-fire hydrology models frequently used by Watershed Emergency Response Teams (WERT) teams in California. We are proposing to incorporate these models into an online watershed database along with easy-to-follow instructions for verifying the assumptions and identifying the best models. (2) We will leverage NASA-developed remote sensing tools for mapping sediment plumes in conjunction with monitoring vegetation recovery in order to advance capabilities for monitoring and forecasting hydrological recovery. After a fire the increased influx of sediments, nutrients and metals threaten both water quality and quantity. Low water inflows due to drought, elevated temperatures and increased nutrients elevate risks for Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). (3) Finally, we will adapt existing algorithms for detecting algal blooms developed for the Great Lakes to these smaller watersheds so that reservoir managers have additional monitoring tools for protecting their communities from sedimentation, water quality issues and HABs.