The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Rapid Prototyping of NASA Next Generation Sensors for the SERVIR System of Fire Detection in Mesoamerica Joel Kuszmaul Henrique Momm Greg Easson The University of Mississippi Collaborators: Dan Irwin, NASA-MSFC Tim Gubbels, SSAI-Goddard Bob Ryan, SSAI-Stennis

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Objectives We do not seek to validate or evaluate the MODIS active fire detection algorithm This has been done by other scientists We seek to compare results from MODIS to results from VIIRS with the goal of identifying issues of active fire detection

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 MODIS Active Fire Product (SERVIR) Fires in Mesoamerica

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 PIXEL VALUE MEANING 0not processed –missing data (black) 2not processed – other reason (black) 3water (blue) 4Cloud (purple) 5No fire (gray) 6Unknown (black) 7Low-confidence fire (orange) 8Nominal confidence fire (yellow) 9High confidence fire (red) MODIS Active Fire Product (MOD14) Production Code, Version 4.3.2

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 The Kappa Statistic Useful for assessing agreement between two sets of classification Corrects for chance agreement An improvement on the proportion of correct classification (simplest measure of agreement) Calculated in the general case as:  = 0 chance agreement  0 better than chance

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 MODIS FIRE ALGORITHM Giglio et al (2003)

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Comparison between MODIS and VIIRS spectral and spatial resolution

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Saturation Differences Channel 22 (331K) Channel 21 (500K) MODIS VIIRS Channel 31 (400K – 340K) M-13 (634K) M-15 (343K) TERRAAQUA

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Study Site

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Date Selection Criteria for the selection of dates –Guatemala has to be covered – entirely if possible –Low cloud coverage – as little as possible –Lots of fires – Comparison with SERVIR online data –Availability of imagery with higher spectral resolution for validation –Availability of the required data: Level 1B and Geolocation files (MOD021KM and MOD03)

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Available auxiliary datasets April 30, 2003 L _ L _ AST_L1B_ _ _8916 AST_L1B_ _ _8130 AST_L1B_ _ _7631 AST_L1B_ _ _7629 AST_L1B_ _ _8914 AST_L1B_ _ _8908 AST_L1B_ _ _8128 AST_L1B_ _ _8903 AST_L1B_ _ _8899 AST_L1B_ _ _9006 April 28, 2003 L _ L _ April 21, 2003 L _ L _ L _ AST_L1B_ _ _4525 AST_L1B_ _ _5672 AST_L1B_ _ _4850 AST_L1B_ _ _5586 AST_L1B_ _ _5582 AST_L1B_ _ _5575 AST_L1B_ _ _5958 AST_L1B_ _ _5589 March 20, 2003 L _ L _

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Comparing MODIS- and VIIRS-based Detection Tools 8 MODIS fire products (one for each sensor, Terra and Aqua, on each of the four study days) 16 simulated VIIRS fire products (with two simulated VIIRS products for every one MODIS product due to the two different errors models)

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Comparing MODIS- and VIIRS-based Detection Tools (continued) The error matrix result comparing the MODIS and simulated VIIRS fire products for March 20, 2003, using the Terra sensor data and the extended error model for the simulated VIIRS data. Overall Accuracy: Kappa:

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Comparing MODIS- and VIIRS-based Detection Tools (continued) Results from the overall kappa calculations for the case of the point source error model

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Comparing MODIS- and VIIRS-based Detection Tools (continued) Overall results comparison for the ability to detect fires using the four different definitions of fires

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Low and Nominal Confidence Fires Nominal confidence fires found only 20% as often using VIIRS Low confidence fires not found at all

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Comparing Detection Tools Using Validation Data Sets: Results from the Aster Imagery Fire location and the 25 nearest MODIS pixels collected to investigate agreement with field data

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Comparing Detection Tools Using Validation Data Sets: Results from the Landsat Imagery Examples of Landsat false color composite images showing active fires in Guatemala Two independent image analysts

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Comparing Detection Tools Using Validation Data Sets: Results from the Landsat Imagery (continued) Comparison of both large and small fires identified in Landsat-7 imagery and fires detected by the MODIS- and VIIRS-based DST

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Summary and Findings The highest  values were obtained when the MODIS- and VIIRS-based assessments of high confidence fires The VIIRS-based fire detection system finds few nominal-confidence fires and no low-confidence fires

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Summary and Findings Previous researchers had identified the potential difficulty of the proposed VIIRS thermal band (3.95  m) in finding small and low intensity fires. Our results confirm their expectations. We recommend a change in the sensor-algorithm combination from what is currently planned.

The University of Mississippi Geoinformatics Center NASA MRC RPC – 11 July 2007 Questions