INNOVATIVE IDEAS FOR DETECTING FIRES FROM A GEOSTATIONARY ORBIT.

摘要

Thermal imagers are used in geostationary orbits for monitoring weather, detecting fires and volcanic eruptions. Each year, global wildfires burn roughly 865 million acres (~3.5×l0~6 km~2) of land. The cost in damage is devastating not to mention the impact on the environment. Geostationary based fire detection capability is currently a sub-mission of dedicated meteorological satellites. The systems scan large areas and hence have long revisit times. Recent advancements in detectors and scanning technology have facilitated the development of smaller systems. This paper discusses the feasibility of detecting fires from a geostationary orbit with uncooled microbolometers. A system is proposed and the system performance is calculated. Real time fire detection for areas of about 1000×1000 km~2 using an uncooled microbolometer is shown to be feasible.