Development of Google Earth Engine Fire Weather Index Calculator for Indonesian Fire Danger Rating System

Abstract

Abstract Tropical peatlands make up almost ten percent of the land surface in Indonesia, making peat fires detrimental not only for global atmospheric carbon levels, but also to public health and socioeconomic activities in the region. Indonesian Fire Danger Rating System (FDRS) was developed based on the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System (CFFWIS), using three different fuel codes and three indices representing fire behaviour. Daily Fire Weather Index (FWI) calculation is done by the Meteorological Climatological and Geophysical Agency (BMKG) with data from its synoptic weather stations network. Distribution of such weather stations are sparse, therefore this paper reports on the development of Fire Weather Index calculator on Google Earth Engine, using high resolution weather data, provided by weather model and remote-sensing open datasets. The resulting application is capable of generating daily maps of FWI components to be used by the Indonesian Fire Danger Rating System.