Reconcilation of satellite detected and ground reported fire information

A primary challenge of predicting smoke from wildfires is obtaining timely and accurate fire information. The highest quality information about a fire is likely possessed by incident command teams. Other ground-based reporting schemes (such as the ICS-209 reports and prescribed-burn reporting systems) often suffer from issues of timeliness and inhomogeneity in the information reported. Satellite information offers the advantage of geographic consistency, but smaller fires are not detected well, and weather can obscure fire detection. We describe an automated system to integrate both ground and satellite information for use with the BlueSky smoke modeling framework. The Satellite Mapping Automatic Reanalysis Tool for Fire Incident Reconciliation (SMARTFIRE) is designed for operational reconciliation of ICS-209-reported, satellite-detected, and user-defined wildfires. This paper describes the development of SMARTFIRE and compares the system to satellite-detected fires alone, ICS-209 reports alone, and high-resolution, non-operational data such as infrared-interpolated fire perimeters.