A Fully Automatic Instantaneous Fire Hotspot Detection Processor Based on AVHRR Imagery - A TIMELINE Thematic Processor

The German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) TIMELINE project aims to develop an operational processing and data management environment to process 30 years of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) raw data into L1b, L2 and L3 products. This article presents the current status of the fully automated L2 active fire hotspot detection processor, which is based on single-temporal datasets in orbit geometry. Three different probability levels of fire detection are provided. The results of the hotspot processor were tested with simulated fire data. Moreover, the processing results of real AVHRR imagery were validated with five different datasets: MODIS hotspots, visually confirmed MODIS hotspots, fire-news data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), burnt area mapping of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS) and data of the Piedmont fire database.