Classification of a burnt area based on spectral images

The Main School of Fire Service, Faculty of Fire Safety Engineering, 54/54 Slowackiego St., 01-629 Warsaw, Poland

^* Corresponding author: aszajewska@sgsp.edu.pl

Abstract

The use of remote sensing techniques allows obtaining information about processes that occur on the surface of the Earth. In the aspects of fire protection and forest protection, it is important to know a burnt area which was created as a result of a fire of the soil cover or a total fire. The knowledge of this area is necessary to assess losses. Remote sensing techniques allow obtaining images in various spectral ranges. Remote sensing satellites offer multi-band data. Mathematical operations that operate on values coming from different spectral ranges allow determining various remote sensing indicators. The manuscript presents the possibility of using the NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) to classify the burnt area. The NDVI is relatively easy to obtain because it operates in the spectral ranges from 630 up to 915 nm, and is obtainable with one detector only. Thus, it can be obtained without any major problems using unmanned aerial vehicles, regardless of time and cloudiness, as is the case when acquiring satellite images. The manuscript describes experimental research and presents the results.