Wildfire Mapping with Drones

Hotspot Detection

Infrared data or thermal data has been used for decades to help us map heat on the landscape. Until today, this process has remained inaccurate, expensive and dangerous. Helicopters fly over areas of the fire with infrared cameras, exposed to the most dangerous portion of the height velocity curve, dropping stakes and flagging tape out the window when a hotspot is discovered in the hopes of guiding firefighters later in the day. You have the opportunity to move your organization forward, keeping your firefighters safer and saving serious money.

Drones not only increase the timeframe available to collect infrared data (now you can fly all night!) but using Nova’s suite of plugins, including Hotspots by Fire AI, your hotspot accuracy and the quality of product that firefighters will receive from you will be unlike anything they have seen before. First thing in the morning you can hand firefighters a geo-referenced map that they can load on their phone and walk directly to each and every hotspot. 

Hotspots by Fire AI automatically identifies and locates all of the heat on your landscape - whether these are big burning areas or small subterranean heat pockets, meaning that when you map with Nova, you’re sending your firefighters onto the line with the best data available. 

Fire Perimeter Mapping

Infrared orthomosaics and high resolution visual data, collected by your drone, can provide incident command teams with improved and up-to-date perimeter mapping of your fire. Accurately knowing the extent of your fire means your IMT can improve their strategic decision making, allocate resources along the perimeter more effectively and have a improved quantitative metrics around the size of the fire. Using drones, and Nova, you can do your job knowing your firefighters have confidence in you.

Visual Imagery and Orthomosaics

Fact: after a fire has gone through, the area looks nothing like it does on Google Earth. Having up to date visual base layers of your fire improves understanding of the growth, fuel availability, the true extent of its reach and helps people in the sky and on the ground better understand what’s happening. Drones are a great tool for collecting data to make orthomosaics of the fire for accurate base layers on maps. However, processing these datasets can be timely and costly depending on your skill set and software tool. MapMosaic by Nova addresses this pain point directly, allowing you to easily upload and process your images so you can visualize your new fire in a few clicks.

Video Footage

Recces (reconnaissance missions) are critical to a fire manager’s ability to properly deploy resources and shift priorities as the fire evolves. Drones have become an incredible tool providing incident managers the ability to see how their fires are evolving without the requirement to get into a helicopter. Another huge benefit is the ability to show a fire's progression to multiple personnel. With Full Motion Video in Nova, you can upload your fireline videos and see the location and orientation of the drone while you watch the video, providing you complete situational awareness of the fire you’re managing!