Project | 01: Remote Sensing Final Project

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I worked on a project that seeks to use remote sensing to analyze the risk of wildfire and its proximity to urban areas in California.

In order to do this, I used indices to analyze locations of urban areas using Normalized Difference Built Index (NDBI), the severity of past fires using the Difference Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) and Composite Burn Index (CBI), and the conditions of vegetation present in the burn areas before the fire occurred using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the Normalized Difference Red Edge (NDRE).

Data gathered from open data sources such as the USGS Earth Explorer and the DigitalGlobe website, that will provide Landsat imagery pre-fire and post-fire.

After analyzing the three factors mentioned above, I looked for areas in California that present similar conditions and how close these areas are to infrastructure and urban settlement. By doing this, I was able to establish which urban areas are most at risk for damage by a future wildfire based on their proximity to areas of vegetation that meet wildfire conditions.

I believe that this project has the very practical application of helping emergency preparedness in the state by informing where resources may be required in the future, and where steps may be taken to mitigate the risk of wildfire.