The Next Generation Fire System: Ongoing Development and Testing during the 2024 Wildfire Season

Satellite remote sensing is an important tool for fire detection and monitoring. Substantial efforts have been undertaken during the past few years to develop the Next Generation Fire System (NGFS), which is a collection of satellite sensor agnostic algorithms and tools that are designed to enable delivery of actionable information and analysis-ready data for critical active fire applications. The NGFS uses visible, shortwave infrared, midwave infrared, and longwave infrared satellite measurements, along with advanced spatial and temporal metrics, to detect fires in a manner that is consistent with human expert analysis of satellite imagery. The fire detection and fire radiative power products are highly resilient to atmospheric obstructions, such as clouds and smoke, through use of robust detection metrics and an atmospheric correction method. The NGFS uses an event-based data model, where fire features are automatically tracked in time, thereby supporting critical use cases and advanced data queries. In this presentation, we will describe efforts during the past year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to enhance the detection sensitivity of the NGFS algorithm and to develop higher order capabilities that support situational awareness for new fires and named fire incidents. This will include discussion of new scientific methods, such as a spectral-based tool to identify detections associated with solar farms, and data dissemination methods, such as web-based dashboards to display satellite imagery and other information associated with new alerts and named fire incidents. Results from case studies using GOES and VIIRS observations will be shown to illustrate the capabilities of the NGFS for fire detection and monitoring in a variety of weather situations and for different regions. We will also discuss our interactions with various partners around the U.S.