Real-Time Wildfire Localization on the NASA Autonomous Modular Sensor using Deep Learning

High-altitude, multi-spectral, aerial imagery is scarce and expensive to acquire, yet it is necessary for algorithmic advances and application of machine learning models to high-impact problems such as wildfire detection. We introduce a human-annotated dataset from the NASA
Autonomous Modular Sensor (AMS) using 12-channel, medium to high altitude (3 - 50 km) aerial wildfire images similar to those used in current US wildfire missions. Our dataset combines spectral data from 12 different channels, including infrared (IR), short-wave IR (SWIR), and thermal. We take imagery from 20 wildfire missions and randomly sample small patches to generate over 4000 training and 400 test images with high variability, including occlusions by smoke/clouds, easily-confused false positives, and nighttime imagery.

We demonstrate results from a deep-learning model to automate the human-intensive process of fire perimeter determination. We train two deep neural networks, one for image classification and the other for pixel-level segmentation. The networks are combined into a
unique real-time segmentation model to efficiently localize active wildfire on an incoming image feed. Our model achieves 96% classification accuracy, 74% Intersection-over-Union (IoU), and 84% recall surpassing past methods, including models trained on satellite data and classical color-rule algorithms. By leveraging a multi-spectral dataset, our model is able to detect active wildfire at nighttime and behind clouds, while distinguishing between false positives. We find that data from the SWIR, IR, and thermal bands is the most important to distinguish fire perimeters. To advance future work in this domain, our dataset and code will be made publicly available.