A webinar on the basics of image processing for active fire detection, showing how to download, process, analyse and visualize the free data acquired by the Copernicus satellites.

Wildfires are a recurrent hazard in Europe and at the global level. They cause a large economic and environmental damages and often result in the loss of human lives. It is thus essential to provide early warning and to increase preparedness to prevent wildfires and, when this is not possible, to minimize the damages caused by them.

Losses by wildfires in Europe are conservatively estimated in about 2.700.000 Million Euro every year. Vegetation fires are usually very dynamic in their magnitude, impact, and location. That is why early information about active fires in remote areas such as forest or grasslands is very important.
Satellite imagery provides an ideal tool for large scale active fire monitoring due to its spatial and temporal coverage, furthermore data acquired form Copernicus Sentinel satellites are provided under open and free policy for all applications and uses.

The purpose of this webinar is to focus on the basics of image processing for active fire detection, showing how to download, process, analyse and visualize the free data acquired by the Copernicus satellites. We will use the ESA SNAP Sentinel-3 Toolbox to demonstrate the methodology to detect active fires with the SLSTR instrument onboard Sentinel-3.