Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (SRD) has called upon ITRES Research Limited to aid in airborne wildfire strategic mapping using our newly released Thermal Airborne Broadband Imager (TABI-1800). ITRES, along with its survey flight partner, Geodesy Digital Mapping Inc., is assisting SRD in actively mapping, among others, a currently out-of-control 400,000 hectare fire in northern Alberta.

Each evening, our crew is provided with target wildfire acquisition areas which are imaged using the wide-swath TABI at night. From this data, after analysis, georeferenced fire maps showing delineated fire hotspot boundaries are produced for the SRD group for early morning delivery. The TABI data from which these maps are created are fully calibrated, geolocated, and have had terrain-related distortions removed (the data has been orthocorrected).

These TABI-generated maps help SRD with situational-visualization towards their efforts in directing ground and air resources to fight this fire.