Abstract
Wildfires have become a major ecological issue impacting humans and the
environment alike. To prevent wildfires from starting in the first
place, better spatial prediction tools are needed to assess wildfire
risk between locations to allow better specialization of firefighting
agencies in performing preventative measures. Current methods of
predicting spatial wildfire risk rely on satellite imagery, which is
significantly limited in terms of spatial and temporal resolution. The
use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for assessing wildfire risk has
significant advantages over satellites due to their much higher spatial
and temporal resolution. This project sought to develop a novel deep
learning model to predict wildfire risk through aerial imaging
specialized for deployment on UAVs. Convolutional neural network
architectures were investigated due to their ability to extract implicit
spatial features from data. Google Earth Engine was used to assemble a
geospatial dataset containing patches of vegetation burnability indices
each mapped to a wildfire risk index based on historical fire
prevalence. The results for the model show extremely high performance
across all metrics evaluated. From this proof of concept research,
UAV-based prediction offers a promising prospective solution to the
drawbacks of satellite imaging in remote sensing of wildfire risk.