PANAJI
Gearing up to tackle the wildfire this coming summer, the Goa Forest department has written to the Forest Survey of India (FSI) requesting to extend the facilities under its ambitious Web Map Service (MWS) and Web Feature Service (WFS)- providing near real-time data on forest fires, thus enabling the department to respond in a rapid way to the incidents.
The department has also requested data under Burnt Area Assessment using satellite data that will help the department to map the areas affected by the fire, which otherwise was done through manual method.
Sources in the forest department informed that Goa will be onboard to get all three facilities of FSI from January 2024 onwards.
“The new advanced facilities will help us in tracking the forest fire, if any, in a time bound manner and respond to it rapidly,” sources said.
FSI creates and shares WMS and WFS of near real-time monitoring of forest fires, large forest fires and FWI based danger rating on demand basis to the State Forest Department. States such as Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana etc. are consuming these services effectively. North Eastern Space Applications Centre (NESAC), Shillong is also using these services for the entire North-Eastern States.
“The technology will help in providing real time data with respect to the exact location of the incident, the geographical feature and road network. Previously, we used to get only the coordinated data from FSI. This new advance feature will put us in a position where we can reach the incident spot in a time bound manner to avoid large scale destruction,” sources said.
Sources further informed that post incident, the department used to undertake the burnt assessment in manual method which was time consuming; but now FSI will provide us satellite data of the burnt areas that would be taken up for restoration.
The Forest Minister Vishwajit Rane has already announced the use of drones for monitoring the forest areas, wildlife sanctuaries and national park, more particularly for forest fire.
Last summer, the State had reported 74 sporadic fire incidents covering wildlife sanctuaries, reserve forests, private forest and communidade land.
