Anthony Vodacek, Ph.D. 
 Principal Investigator 
 Send me email
 Phone:585-475-7816 

 Michael Richardson 
 Project Manager 
 email:richardson@cis.rit.edu 
 Phone:585-475-5294 
 

FIRES was a NASA-sponsored research project investigating the fundamental science behind wildland fires and establishing the new concepts for observing fires from remote platforms. The project duration was from September 2000 through February 2005 and was led by Rochester Institute of Technology's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science. Another element of this project was to establish the requirements of the User community for information products as part of wildland and wildfire management. Some of our collaborators during the project were Telespazio, the Institute for the Applications of Geospatial Technology (IAGT), US Forest Service Fire Sciences Lab, The Nature Conservancy, US Forest Service Northeast Research Station, University of Montana, NASA Ames, US Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center, Georgia Tech, NCAR, and Veridian. Work on the project continues as more journal articles are being prepared for submission and as graduate theses are completed. Fire related research at RIT continues through funding from NASA (Wildfire Airborne Sensor Project (WASP) and Integrated Sensor Systems Initiative (ISSI)), the National Science Foundation (Data Dynamic Simulation for Disaster Management, see link below), and Joint Fire Sciences (see link to Bob Kremens' Web page below).

Refereed Journal Articles, Book Chapters, Theses

Wang, Z., 2008. Modeling Wildland Fire Radiance in Synthetic Remote Sensing Scenes. Ph.D. Dissertation, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY.

Wang, Z., Vodacek, A., and Coen, J. 2008. Generation of synthetic infrared remote sensing scenes. Submitted to the Journal of Applied Remote Sensing.

Luisi, D., 2007. Conceptual Design and Specification of a Microsatellite Forest Fire Detection System. M.S. Thesis, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY,

Ononye, A., Vodacek, A., and Saber, E. 2007. Automated extraction of fire line parameters from multispectral infrared images. Remote Sens. Environ. 108:179-188. doi:10.1016/j.rse.2006.09.029.

Li, Y., Vodacek, A., and Zhu, Y. 2007. An automatic statistical segmentation algorithm for extraction of fire and smoke regions. Remote Sens. Environ. 108:171-178. doi:10.1016/j.rse.2006.09.023

Li, Y., 2006. Wildfire Detection and Mapping Algorithms Development. Ph.D. Dissertation, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY.

Li, Y., A. Vodacek, R.L. Kremens, A.E. Ononye, and C. Tang. 2005. A hybrid contextual approach to wildland fire detection using multispectral imagery, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens. 43:2115-2126.

Mandel, J., M. Chen, J.L. Coen, C.C. Douglas, L.P. Franca, C. Johns, R. Kremens, A. Puhalskii, A. Vodacek, W. Zhao. Dynamic Data Driven Wildfire Modeling. Submitted to Dynamic Data Driven Applications Systems, F. Darema (Ed.), Kluwer, Amsterdam.

Kremens, R., Faulring, J., Gallagher, A., Seema, A., and Vodacek, A., 2003. Autonomous field-deployable wildland fire sensors, Int. J. Wildland Fire. 12:237-244.

Fordham, A.J., 2002. Band Selection and Algorithm Development for Remote Sensing of Wildfires. M.S. Thesis, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY.

Vodacek, A., Kremens, R.L., Fordham, A.J., VanGorden, S.C., Luisi, D., Schott, J.R., and Latham, D.J., 2002, Remote optical detection of biomass burning using a potassium emission signature, Int. J. Remote Sensing, 23, 2721-2726.

Li, Y., A. Vodacek, R.L. Kremens, and A.E. Ononye. 2005. Double random field model adaptive detection in remote sensing imagery. Conference on Information Science and Systems, The John Hopkins University, March 16-18, 2005.

Mandel, J., L.S. Bennethum, M. Chen, J.L. Coen, C.C. Douglas, L.P. Franca, C.J. Johns, M. Kim, A.V. Knyazev, R.Kremens, V.Kulkarni, G. Qin, A. Vodacek, J. Wu, W. Zhao, and A. Zornes. 2005. Towards a dynamic data driven application system for wildfire simulation. V.S. Sunderam et al. (Eds.): Computational Science - Proceedings ICCS 2005, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, Vol. 3515, p. 632-639.

Li, Y., Y. Zhu, and A. Vodacek. 2005. An unsupervised statistical image segmentation algorithm for fire and smoke region extraction. EastFIRE Conference, George Mason University, May 2005. CD-ROM.

Ononye, A.E., A. Vodacek, and E. Saber. 2005. Extraction of active fire line and active fire map using AVIRIS imagery. EastFIRE Conference, George Mason University, May 2005. CD-ROM.

Ononye, A.E., A. Vodacek, and R.L. Kremens. 2005. Fire temperature retrieval using constrained spectral unmixing and emissivity estimation. In: Algorithms and Technologies for Multispectral, Hyperspectral, and Ultraspectral Imagery XI, S.S. Shen and P.E. Lewis, Eds. Proc. SPIE Vol. 5806, p.352-360.

Ononye, A., Vodacek, A., and Kremens, R. 2005. Improved fire temperature estimation using constrained spectral unmixing. In: Remote Sensing for Field Users. Proc. 10th Biennial USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Conference. Salt Lake City, UT. CD-ROM, ISBN 1-57083-075-4, ASPRS

Li, Y., Vodacek, A., Kremens, R., and Ononye, A. 2005. A Hybrid contextual fire detection algorithm using MODIS Imagery. In: Remote Sensing for Field Users. Proc. 10th Biennial USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Conference. Salt Lake City, UT. CD-ROM, ISBN 1-57083-075-4, ASPRS

Vodacek, A., Kremens, R., Ononye, A., and Faulring, J. 2005. Remote image and field data collection for a dynamic fire modeling system. In: Remote Sensing for Field Users. Proc. 10th Biennial USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Conference. Salt Lake City, UT. CD-ROM, ISBN 1-57083-075-4, ASPRS

Wang, Z., Vodacek, A., Kremens, R., and Ononye, A. 2005. Modeling wildland fire with DIRSIG. In: Remote Sensing for Field Users. Proc. 10th Biennial USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Conference. Salt Lake City, UT. CD-ROM, ISBN 1-57083-075-4, ASPRS

Vodacek, A., Ononye, A., Wang, Z., and Li, Y. 2005. Automatic estimation of direction of propagation of fire from aerial imagery. In: Remote Sensing for Field Users. Proc. 10th Biennial USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Conference. Salt Lake City, UT. CD-ROM, ISBN 1-57083-075-4, ASPRS

Ononye, A., A. Vodacek, Y. Li, and Z. Wang. 2005. Mapping of active fire area by image gradient technique using multi-spectral imagery. In: Remote Sensing for Field Users. Proc. 10th Biennial USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Conference. Salt Lake City, UT. CD-ROM, ISBN 1-57083-075-4, ASPRS

Mandel, J., M. Chen, L. P. Franca, C. Johns, A. Puhalskii, J. L. Coen, C. C. Douglas, R. Kremens, A. Vodacek, W. Zhao. 2004. A Note on Dynamic Data Driven Wildfire Modeling. M. Bubak et al. (Eds.): Computational Science - Proceedings ICCS 2004, Part III. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer. Vol. 3038. p. 725-731.

Wang, Z., and Vodacek, A., Kremens, R. L., and Ononye, A. E. 2004. Modeling wildland fire with DIRSIG. In: Visual Information Processing XIII, Zia-ur Rahman, Robert A. Schowenderdt, Stephen E. Riechenbach, Eds. Proc. SPIE, Vol. 5438, p. 290-296.

Ononye, A. E., A. Vodacek, R. L. Kremens, Y. Li, and D. Merritt. 2003. Empirical testing of subpixel detection of fire. In: Algorithms and Technologies for Multispectral, Hyperspectral, and Ultraspectral Imagery IX, Sylvia S. Shen, Paul E. Lewis, Eds. Proc. SPIE, Vol. 5093, p. 343-352.

Li, Y., A. Vodacek, R. L. Kremens, A. E. Ononye. 2003. A new algorithm for global forest fire detection using multispectral images. In: Targets and Backgrounds IX: Characterization and Representation, Wendell R. Watkins, Dieter Clement, William R. Reynolds, Eds., Proc. SPIE, Vol. 5075, p. 367-377.

Kremens, R.L., Gallagher, A.J., Seema, A., 2002, Low Cost Autonomous Field-Deployable Environment Sensors, Proceedings of the American Institue of Physics Unattended Radiation Sensor Systems for Remote Applications, Volume 632, September, 2002, Washington, DC.
 

The Wildland Fire Needs Information Workshop was held on November 4 & 5, 2001 at the University of Montana in Missoula to gather data to aid in the establishment of the requirements of the User community.  The Workshop was held just before the 2001 International Wildland Fire Safety Summit, with many of the Safety Summit attendees also taking part in the Workshop. 

The Workshop results are summarized in the Wildland Fire Needs Information Workshop Report (pdf).  The raw data compiled during the Workshop activities is compiled in the Wildland Fire Needs Information Workshop Database (Excel worksheet).

Some of our favorite links to other wildland fire sites
 

Dynamic Data Driven Applications Systems (DDDAS)

The Fire Sciences Lab in Missoula

MODIS MODVOLC hot-spot Web site at the University of Hawai'i

Wildland fire research in the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division at NCAR

National Interagency Fire Center

Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination (The site for GeoMAC interactive fire mapping!)

The Nature Conservancy Fire Initiative

International Journal of Wildland Fire

USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center

MODIS Fire and Thermal Anomalies

Ph.D. Students

Ying Li, Fire detection algorithm development

Zhen Wang, Radiometric fire modeling and visualization in DIRSIG

M.S. Students

Andy Fordham, M.S. Thesis: Band Selection and Algorithm Development for Remote Sensing of Wildfires, 2002

• Ambrose Ononye, Ph.D.
• Organization and analysis of laboratory and field data of the physical and radiometric characteristics of fires
• Organization and analysis of visible/near IR and thermal airborne spectrometer overflights of fires using the DIRS group Modular Imaging Spectrometer Instrument (MISI)

• Bob Kremens, Ph.D. (see his Web page for details)
• Fire physics and radiometry
• Hardware updates to MISI
•  Resident firefighter's "Red Card" holder
• Networked field deployable fire detectors
• Tim Gallagher
• MISI hardware updates, calibration, and operation
• He's the one that gets to fly in the plane!

Places to Go

Areas of Research 

Send a Comment 

DIRS Web Resources