The Ikhana unmanned airborne system (UAS) western states fire imaging missions: from concept to reality (2006–2010)

Abstract

Between 2006 and 2010, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the US Forest Service flew 14 unmanned airborne system (UAS) sensor missions, over 57 fires in the western US. The missions demonstrated the capabilities of a UAS platform (NASA Ikhana UAS), a multispectral sensor (autonomous modular sensor (AMS)), onboard processing and data visualization (Wildfire Collaborative Decision Environment (W-CDE)), to provide fire intelligence to management teams. Autonomous, on-board processing of the AMS sensor data allowed real-time fire product delivery to incident management teams on the wildfire events. The fire products included geo-rectified, colour-composite quick-look imagery, fire detection shape files, post-fire real-time normalized burn ratio imagery and burn area emergency response (BAER) imagery. The W-CDE was developed to allow the ingestion and visualization of AMS data and other pertinent fire-related information layers. This article highlights the technologies developed and employed, the UAS wildfire imaging missions performed and the outcomes and findings of the multi-year efforts.

Keywords:

• UAS/UAV
• Ikhana
• wildfire
• CDE
• thermal-infrared

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through grants (REASoN-0109-0172 and ARRA grant No. NNX09AW28A) awarded to support this work. They are also grateful for the support of: S. Ambrose (NASA), T. Fryberger (NASA), B. Cobleigh (NASA), T. Rigney (NASA), M. Rivas (NASA), G. Buoni (NASA), K. Howell, J. Myers (UCSC), T. Hildum (UCSC), M. Cooper (GA-ASI) and S. Schoenung (BAERI). They also acknowledge the wildfire management community members who engaged them in defining observation criteria and metrics that allowed the authors to help improve their wildfire/disaster mitigation capabilities.

Notes

This material is published by permission of the NASA-Ames Research Center and the U.S. Forest Service, under Cooperative Agreement Numbers NNA07CN16A and number NNX09AW28A. The U.S. Government retains for itself, and others acting on its behalf, a paid-up, non-exclusive, and irrevocable worldwide license in said article to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the public, and perform publicly and display publicly, by or on behalf of the Government. The work performed by NASA and U.S. Forest Service Government Employee authors of this manuscript was authored as part of the Contributor's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.