Producing Mosaiced Infrared Data on Natural Hazards for Real-time Emergency Management using UAS and Thermal Infrared Cameras

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) provide a unique capability for emergency management and real-time hazard assessment with access to hazardous environments that maybe off limits for manned aircraft while reducing the risk to personnel and loss of ground assets. When dealing with hazards, such as forest fires and volcanic eruptions, there is a need to assess the location of the fire/flow front and where best to assign ground personnel to reduce the risk to local populations and infrastructure. Thermal infrared cameras provide the ideal tool to detect subtle changes in the developing fire/flow front while providing data 24/7. There are limits to the detecting capabilities of these cameras given the wavelengths used and image resolution available. Given the large thermal contrast between the hot flow front and surrounding landscape then the data can be used to map out the location and changes seen as the front of the flow/fire advances. To map the complete hazard then either the UAS has to be flown at an altitude to capture the event in one image or the data has to be mosaiced together. Higher altitudes lead to coarser resolution imagery and therefore we will show how thermal infrared data can be mosaiced to provide the highest spatial resolution map of the hazard. We will present results using different UAS and thermal cameras including adding neutral density filters to detect hotter thermal targets. Timely generation of these mosaiced maps in a real-time environment is critical for those assessing the ongoing event and we will show how these maps can be generated quickly with the necessary spatial and thermal accuracy while discussing the requirements needed to generate thermal infrared maps of the hazardous events that are both useful for quick real-time assessment and also for further investigation in research projects.