ABSTRACT
Most of the literature on the fire danger indices, methods, and rating systems is highly scattered. In this study, we compile details on widely used fire danger assessment used in different regions of the world. Most of them integrate temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity data related to a concept of drought, for quantifying fuel moisture content of dead and live fuels. Several indices also integrate wind and synoptic weather conditions for quantifying fire ignition and behavior characteristics. Although most of the meteorological fire danger indices are useful, they can pose operational problems since weather station data, which are used to parameterize the indices, are often sparse in remote areas and spatial interpolation techniques may fail in complex terrain. Further, collecting vegetation and fuel parameters over large areas for real-time reporting can be cumbersome and constrained due to a lack of funds. Thus, in addition to meteorological station data and field-based methods, integrating satellite remote sensing technology can provide useful solutions for fire danger assessment. In this chapter, some of the meteorological, fire, vegetation, and topographic parameters that can be retrieved using the satellite data are highlighted. Also, the importance of calibrating and validating the fire danger indices and rating systems with the observed fire data in different regions of the world has been stressed.
