Geomantics in Emergency Planning and Management :Canadian Forest Fire management Experience
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Improved emergency planning and management is a concern as well as priority in Canada and in many other countries. It involves several aspects ranging from monitoring, risk assessment and planning to copying with an event and evaluation its consequences. Decision making in emergency management requires reliable information extracted from accurate and current spatial data . this is precisely where geomantic technologies, encompassing the business of geographic or spatial information management, come in to play.
Geomantic may be defined as the science ad technologies involved in management of geographically referenced information, including its acquisition, storage , analysis and dissemination. Geomatics is an "umbrella term" which has been adopted in Canada to encompass the disciplines of surveying, mapping, hydrographic surveys and nautical charting, cartography, remote sensing, and geographic information system (GIS) including associated systems, products and services.
Geographic Information on Canada's Landmass
Geomatiacs Canada is the national agency responsible for surveying, mapping, remote sensing and GIS in the Canadian federal government. It maintains and provides a variety of geographic information products on Canada's landmass for use in emergency management application
3.Specific categories of products include aeronautical charts, cadastral surveys, geodetic survey, remote sensing data, thematic maps and topographic information. These are available both as digital and conventional products except for the products of the geodetic survey which are in digital domain. These data are crucial both for assisting the emergency services to make assessments about resources that they need to deploy in such events and for high quality estimates to be made of risk
Geodetic survey products Geodetic Survey Products Survey Product5 geodetic Survey Products.
The geodetic survey products are required for precise positioning, tracking and navigation. Specific products routinely supplied consist of vertical and Horizontal Control Networks Products, Canadian Active Control System (CACS) observational Data, GPS Satellite Clock Corrections , and Precise GPS Satellite Ephemerides
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Topographic Information
Products on topographic information consist of the National Topographic Database (NTDB). The Canadian Road Network (CRN) the Canadian Elevation Data (CDED) and the Digital Terrain Elevation Data (DTED)
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NTDB covers the entire Canadian landmass and contains the features normally found on topographic maps at the scale of 1:50,000 and 1:250,000.
- CRN is the name of the national digital information base of Canada's road infrastructure. Extracting and reclassifying road infrastructure data from the NTDB created the CRN
- CDED consists of an ordered array of ground elevations at regularly spaced intervals. It is based on NTS maps at the 1:250,000 scale.
- Geomatics canada's DTED constitute a uniform, continuous matrix of altimetric data. However canadian coverage of DTED is incomplete
Remote Sensing Products
Satellite and airborne imagery covering the Canadian landmass are available from the center for Remote (CCRS)3. These include ERS-1 canadian Images, AVHRR Canadian Images, Sample Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Data, SPOT PLA/MLA, Landsat MSS/TM, MOS MESSR, MSR & VTIR, ERS-1 SAR, JERS-1, NAA AVHRR, Airborne C/X SAR, Airborne Data and SEASAT SAR. With RADARSAT's launch on Nov. 4, 1995, Canada and the world now have access to the first radar satellite system capable of large scale production and timely delivery of data.
A private corporation, RADARSAR International, Inc. (RSI), was established in 1989 to process, market and distribute RADAESAR data to Canadian commercial users and to international users. In cooperation with CCRS and the Canadian Space Agency, RSI will help research and develop commercial applications, and will negotiate foreign reception and distribution agreements for RADERSAT data.
Canada's Fire Management Systems
Forest fires are a regular and serious concern in Canada. Ad an example, during the 1970-1995 period, the number of forest fires in Canada ranged from about 6,000 to 12000 a year. Roughly half of the fires were caused by human activities while the remaining were attributed to lightning or unknown causes. The area burned varied from a low of 0.4 million hectares in 1978 to a high of almost 8 million hectares in 1990 amounting to $275 million, respectively in fire fighting costs
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There are 417.6 million hectares of forestland in Canada. The forest sector and forest resources are vitally important to Canada, in terms of their contribution both to the national economy and to the environment. Condition want relevant, timely, and authoritative information about the state of their national resource. Geomatics technologies and products are employed in the data acquisition and in managing the forest resource including fires.
Canadian Wildland Fire Information system (CWFIS)
The CEFIS, developed by National Resources Canada, is an example of a hazard-specific national system. The system automatically accesses observed and forecast national weather data, uses a GIS to transform the data into spatial information on probable fore danger and fire behavior, displays the information as national maps, and disseminates the maps through the World Wide Web. The system's database incorporates underlying terrain, fuel, and elevation maps. The goal here is "to develop information and decision- support system to monitor and predict wildland fire activity in Canada and to enhance fire management efficiency and effectiveness"
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National monitoring and forecasting reports on fire weather , behavior, serverity, and on fire management Criteria and Indicators.
- Decision support tools and models for fire occurrence prediction, resource allocation, mesoscale fire weather forecasting, and landscape level fire simulations.
- Long-term five growth models using probability and climatology
- Collaboration in the development of a national fire economic analysis system.
The CWFIS provide tools to personnel responsible for fire control and suppression. Theses tools range from simple charts and nomograms to sophisticated computer programs and physical models. GIS can combine fuel (vegetation ) , terrain and weather data needed to run fire growth models . long-term fire growth can be predicted using probability and climatology.
