Forecasting Approaches

MODIS is a remote sensing sensor with fire detection capability mounted on two satellites that were launched in December 1999 and May 2002 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), USA. Each of these satellites records two fire observations daily, resulting in four daily observations. The MODIS system carries out automated data acquisition, processing, reporting, and feedback on fire locations. It provides location information at 1 km × 1 km resolution on active fires present during the satellite's hover across an area, twice in a day. The International Center for Mountain Development (ICIMOD), based in Nepal, has the ground receiving station, launched in January 2011, which is convenient for the south Asian countries to acquire data when required. The MODIS fire points from 2000 to 2013 for Bhutan were obtained from the ICIMOD. The detection algorithm identifies pixels with one or more actively burning fires that are commonly referred to as "fire pixels". Each detected fire represents the center of a 1 km pixel that contains one or more fire hotspots. The actual pixel size varies depending on the location of an observation in the swath. In this study, the MODIS points were overlaid on each of the forest fire-prone maps produced by the FR and AHP-based models. The number of points overlapped with each of the fire-prone categories were measured to determine the reliability of MODIS satellites and fire points in predicting forest fire-prone areas.