Seeing smoke sooner

01Field scene

What a ridge camera can see.

The red ground is what a camera on the ridge mast can see over real terrain; the rest is hidden by the slopes. Line of sight, not lens quality, decides how many masts a forest needs.

A weather station in the stand reports the inputs of the fire weather index, whose structure has guided fire danger rating in Canada since 1987².

Figure as text: Ridge cameras, a weather station and a private cell over real terrain

A forested valley drawn from an elevation model, with two camera masts on ridges; a red stipple marks the ground visible from one of the masts.

• Ridge camera
• Ridge camera
• Fire weather
• Private cell

02Simulator

How far a smoke column can be seen.

A camera does not need to see the flame, only the smoke column above the canopy. The geometric line of sight between a mast and the top of a column grows with the square root of both heights. Set a 30 m mast and a 300 m column to see why lookouts were built on summits.

Figure as text: Line of sight from a camera mast to a smoke column

An elevation drawing over the curved Earth with a mast on the left, a smoke column on the right and the red sight line between their tops.

03Systems diagram

From pixel to alert.

A camera’s frames are classified at the edge, so only the detections, not the video, cross the backhaul. Satellite hot spots arrive through a public service within hours of an overpass³. Both end as an alert in a standard format that every agency can read⁴.

If the backhaul fails, the edge still detects and can send a short alert over a satellite link. Try the scenarios.

Figure as text: Detection chain from cameras and satellites to the fire agency

A four-tier diagram: cameras and a weather station, the private cell and a satellite link, the edge node with the detection model, and the fire agency and the public alerting system.

• Field: Camera 1, Camera 2, Fire weather
• Links: Private cell, Satellite link
• Edge: Edge detection
• Agencies: Fire agency, Public alerts

8 links. Scenarios: Normal operation; Backhaul to the agencies cut; Private cell down.

04Timeline to 2030

The view from orbit, toward 2029.

Polar-orbiting imagers already detect active fires at 375 m¹. Canada’s WildFireSat mission is being built to observe fires at the time of day when they burn most actively, for operational fire management⁵.

Figure as text: Fire danger rating and fire detection from space

A timeline from 1987 to 2030 with the fire weather index, the 375 m active fire product, the public fire information system and the planned wildfire satellite.

1. 1987 Fire Weather Index System described. The structure of the Canadian fire weather index, still the basis of fire danger rating.²
2. 2014 375 m active fire detection. Active fires detected from a polar-orbiting imager at 375 m.¹
3. 2024 Near-real-time fire information. Active fire detections distributed publicly within hours of each overpass.³
4. 2029 WildFireSat planned. A Canadian mission designed for operational wildfire monitoring.⁵