Forest Fire Monitoring in Polissya, Kyiv Oblast, Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the Carpathian Mountains

Every day in Ukraine there are about 150 fires, causing on average 12 deaths and injures. As a result of these fires, the state suffers losses of about 3 million hryvnia (600,000 USD). According to the statistics of the Main Fire Prevention Administration under the Ministry of Domestic Affairs of Ukraine, during 2001 the losses entailed by fires total 220 million hryvn³a (44 million USD), equal to 0.2 % of gross domestic product of Ukraine.

Traditional use of aircraft for monitoring of fire risk regions involves significant expenditures. That is why there is a growing interest in applying satellite systems for remote sensing of the Earth to forest fire monitoring. Making extensive use of satellite technologies, ULRMC performs forest fire monitoring in Polissya, Kyiv Oblast, Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the Carpathians on a daily basis.

ULRMC is capable of locating a forest fire using satellite images of Ukraine, three or four of which are acquired on a daily basis through a High Resolution Picture Transmission antenna (HRPT). The HRPT station receives data from the NOAA Polar Orbiting satellites, owned by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Over about 66 months of 2002, using modern satellite technologies, we located dozens of fires in Kyiv Oblast," says ULRMC's remote sensing specialist Yuriy Shtepa. "Forest and peat fires occur mainly in the evening. High fire occurrence in the evening can result from people spending their leisure time in forests."

Despite only three years of fire monitoring, ULRMC has located over 800 fires throughout the territory of Ukraine. All acquired data about fires, including initial images, is provided to the authorities responsible for ground-based monitoring. One of ULRMC's focuses is the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ).

Forest fire monitoring project is implemented through the financial assistance of the US Agency for International Development (USAID-Kyiv) within the framework of the Temporary Standing Orders for Information Exchange between ULRMC and CEZ Administration, and the Agreement for Cooperation and Information Exchange between the Ministry of Emergency Situations and Chornobyl Affairs of Ukraine (MESCAU) and ULRMC. In 2001-2002 ULRMC has provided information exchange while monitoring floods in Polissya and fires in CEZ.

Within the framework of the current project, ULRMC performs the following activities:

• Daily analysis of NOAA-12, -14, and -15 satellite images acquired by ULRMC for the purpose of fire detection. The monitoring results are registered in the Fire Registration Journal and are stored in the ULRMC office in Kyiv.
• Permanent communication with the MESCAU Crisis Center and CEZ Administration (on a daily basis during periods of high fire risk and several times a month during the rest of the year).
• Immediately informing MESCAU about the identified areas of potential fires.

You can get current information about fires on ULRMC's web site. Go to Corporative Client section, where you will get free access to the maps of recent big fires located by ULRMC such as a fire in Kyiv Oblast.

You can get more detailed information about the project from Yaroslav Parkhisenko, Project Manager.

In the ULRMC Publications section, you can learn about ULRMC capabilities of forest fire monitoring using NOAA satellite images.

Read about ULRMC monitoring of fire risk situations in the previous.