Fire and land managers are benefiting from a new online vegetation condition and flammability mapping tool – the first of its kind introduced to Australia.
Effectively providing a clearer picture of immediate fire risks, the Australian Flammability Monitoring System (AFMS) uses satellite data to collect information on live moisture content in trees, shrubs and grass. This information is then displayed on an interactive map, helping fire managers in their prescribed burning efforts and prepositioning firefighting resources.
Dr Marta Yebra at the Australian National University led the previous Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC project that developed the AFMS following the Black Summer bushfires on the east coast of Australia in 2019. Working closely with fire behaviour analysts at the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) State Operations Centre, Dr Yebra developed the first-ever interactive map clearly showing vegetation and soil dryness across Australia. This enabled informed decision-making about where a fire may spread and priority areas when allocating resources and equipment.
The core of AFMS is satellite-derived live fuel moisture content (LFMC) and flammability information across Australia at 500 metre resolution, using MODIS satellite data. It also provides soil moisture content information at five kilometres, provided by the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) via a workflow maintained by the Australian National University (ANU). AFMS is an online platform that was viewed around 3,000 times in the past year.
Recent developments to AFMS include a higher spatial resolution (20 metre) version of the LFMC product, generated using Sentinel-2 satellite data via the GA DEA platform, which will be fully implemented into GA’s systems in 2024 following Centre funding to support system updates in 2022 and 2023.
“The Australian Flammability Monitoring System gives us a really good guide across the whole country for how we expect fire to behave on any particular day. This helps agencies position resources during a bushfire, keeping our people safe and also with prescribed burn planning – particularly in mountainous locations where flammability changes depending on which side of a mountain you are on.
It has been an amazing partnership with the research team. It is great quality science from a team that is driven by wanting to see their work make an impact – that has been the key to getting us to this stage.”
Dr Adam Leavesley, Bushfire Research Utilisation Manager, ACT Parks and Conservation Service