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Senior CSIR scientist and remote sensing specialist, Philip Frost, is blazing a trail into Africa and abroad to put detection information directly into the hands of those best equipped to deal with the potential devastation of fires.
Stationed at the CSIR’s Meraka Institute, a national research centre in Information and Communications Technology, Philip’s ingenuity in processing satellite data is providing disaster managers, fire fighters, farmers and forest managers with near-real-time alerts of fires and burned areas. He led the team that developed the Advanced Fire Information System (AFIS) and is spearheading its expansion into southern Africa. AFIS will become a global system later this year when launched in North America and Russia.
Philip graduated from the University of Pretoria in 2001 with a BSc GIS (Hons) (UNIGIS) and joined the Agricultural Research Council’s Institute for Soil, Climate and Water, where he worked as a researcher and remote sensing project leader. In 2002, Philip became a remote sensing product developer at the CSIR’s Satellite Application Centre before joining the CSIR’s Meraka Institute in 2006 as a senior scientist. He will graduate with an MSc in Geography (Remote Sensing) from the University of Johannesburg this year.
Fire detection breakthrough
In 2004, while at the CSIR’s Satellite Application Centre, Philip – with a number of CSIR colleagues and fellow researchers at the University of Maryland in the United Sates – developed and launched the AFIS to pinpoint actual fires, identify potential fires and provide information on fire spread probability and direction.
The sophisticated AFIS processing system uses earth observation satellites from NASA and Europe, which within minutes of passing over a specific area anywhere in southern Africa can detect hotspots or locate fires.
Spearheading world-firsts
“During my post-graduate studies, while specialising in satellite-based fire monitoring underneath power lines, I recognised the benefits of an early-warning fire system to help Eskom reduce the damage to their transmission lines and prevent power supply disruptions,” says Philip. Under his leadership and supported by Eskom, the AFIS alert system combined mobile phone technology to generate critical near-real-time warnings, or alert SMSs of fires within pre-defined areas of interest. At the time in 2006, the coupling of remote sensing with mobile technology for alert messaging was a world-first. Today it is used to alert fire protection associations countrywide.
Later that year Philip spearheaded an agreement with Eskom and the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to broadcast data from the CSIR and Eskom during the television weather bulletin free of charge, making the SABC the first public broadcaster globally to televise actual fire maps.
This was followed by yet another innovation, this time for cell phone users. Working with the space science and engineering group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States, Philip and his team developed a technology demonstrator that enables near-real-time cell phone access to satellite information on weather conditions. They played a key role in customising the product to provide local information to users in South and southern Africa.
Expanding fire risk mitigation into southern Africa and global regions
In 2007, the CSIR acquired a second satellite receiving station with funding from Eskom to ensure a continuous real-time data information stream. “In addition to active fire detection,” says Philip, “we produce monthly burned area estimates and daily and weekly fire danger maps. These are distributed to hundreds of fire managers across southern Africa.”
The service is cost-free, includes an online viewer and is used by farming conservancies who take on fire management responsibilities and pool fire-fighting efforts. It also supports government’s poverty alleviation efforts through its Working on Fire project. “We use the AFIS for fire-fighting and safety training in rural communities, and set up fire response teams, which generate income.”
Currently Philip and his team are working on a fire danger index for southern Africa. By combining atmospheric and vegetation condition data, they produce a risk map that gives fire managers and fire fighters up to five days’ warning to prepare their response. The map indicates areas where it would be difficult to stop the spread of fire due to high humidity and wind speed in summer and the probability of run-away fires in winter are prevalent.
“Our success with the AFIS locally has sparked interest in implementing the system in Africa and abroad,” says Philip. “The CSIR has donated a processing server to Kenya, which now produces satellite-based fire information for the entire eastern and central Africa regions. The information is fed back to the main AFIS server in South Africa.”
“Bandwidth is a challenge to moving into Africa. We have circumvented the need for Internet access with the AFIS field terminal, developed in collaboration with the European Union’s FP7 projects. The terminals use a low-cast C-band satellite communication link and can be installed almost anywhere. We hope to provide all southern African countries with a field terminal during the course of this year to ensure their fire protection services receive fire information.” The European Union’s AMESD (Africa Monitoring for the Environment for Sustainable Development) project has included the field terminals in the ‘fire services’ component of their project.
Sharing specialist knowledge and expertise
Philip is passionately committed to using remote-sensing technology to help manage natural resources in southern Africa. Since 2009, he has used his expertise in satellite-based fire monitoring to present workshops, such as to CEOS members (Committee on Earth Observing Satellites) on remote sensing for disaster management and on the MODIS (moderate resolution image spectro-radiometer) near-real-time application to members of the Geosciences and Remote Sensing Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (the worlds largest association for the advancement of technology). The CSIR Satellite Applications Centre is an associate member of CEOS.
He is the author and co-author of numerous articles, papers and publications and the recipient of the Kynoch Prize for Best Paper, entitled “Application of Remote Sensing Technology in the South African Sugar Industry”, and presented to the South Africa Sugar Technologists Association in 2000. He is currently the reviewer for the journal Remote Sensing of the Environment.
Philip is a member of the Geo-information Society of South Africa and sits on the steering committee for the GOFC-GOLD Southern African Fire Network (SAFNET). He has been interviewed on AFIS, MODIS and the 2004 fire disaster in the Kruger National Park by Carte Blanche, AgriTV and Morning Live. He is married and lives in Pretoria.
CSIR Communication:
Alida Britz
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