Review of the use of remote sensing for monitoring wildfire risk conditions to support fire risk assessment in protected areas

Abstract

Fire risk assessment is one of the most components of the management of fire that offers the framework for monitoring fire risk conditions.  Whilst monitoring fire risk conditions commonly revolved around field data, Remote Sensing (RS) play key role in monitoring and quantifying fire risk indicators. This study presents a review of remote sensing data and techniques for fire risk monitoring and assessment with a particular emphasis on its implications for wildfire risk mapping in protected areas. Firstly, we concentrates on RS derived variables employed to quantify both the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence vegetation flammability. Thereafter, an evaluation of the prominent RS platforms such as Broadband, Hyperspectral and Active sensors that have been utilized for wildfire risk assessment Furthermore, we demonstrate the effectiveness in obtaining information that have operational use or immediate potentials for operational application in PA.  RS techniques that involve extraction of landscape information from imagery were summarised. A review has concluded that in practices, a fire risk assessment that consider all factors that influence fire ignition and  propagation is impossible to establish, however it is imperative to incorporate indicators or variables of very high heterogeneous.