Artificial intelligence for Earth observation: monitoring of wildfires - eo science for society

Wildfires are a natural component of the Earth system, important for nutrient release and vegetation growth. Climate change, however, is contributing to more frequent, more destructive and less predictable wildfires worldwide. Australia, in particular, experiences regular bush fires during the summer, but the devastating 2019-2020 bushfire season, known as the Black Summer, was unprecedented in its severity and scale, killing dozens of people and destroying thousands of homes. Quantifying and monitoring fires is fundamental to mitigate their negative impact on the environment and society, but also for the ongoing climate studies, as wildfires have a significant influence on global atmospheric emissions and climate change. The increasing availability of Earth Observation (EO) data combined with the advanced analytics provided by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), along with the exceptional processing power of cloud computing, has allowed the AI4EO wildfire project, led by CGI UK, to generate a service that can map fires at an unprecedented level of detail and also provide fast, reliable and accessible information as required by the wildfire fighting community.