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31. Beijing 2008 
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry. Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part Bl. Beijing 2008 
rom satellite data 
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1 hundred meters, 
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GSD [m| 
□ • Mapping CD - Forestry 0 - Agriculture CD - Disaster Monitoring 
0-Geology 0 - Oceanography 0- Hydrology 0 - Meteorology 
Figure 2. Earth observation request: GSD versus 
spectral resolution 
Figure 3. Earth observation request: GSD vs revisit time 
3.2 Example Disaster Monitoring: The Micro-Satellite BIRD 
IO 5 -x 
• Cyclones and storms, 
• El Nino, 
• floods, 
• fires, 
• volcanic activities, 
• earthquakes, 
• landslides, 
• oil slicks, 
• environmental pollution, 
• industrial and power plant disaster, 
we need to focus on one specific category. In this paper, the fire 
categon^may serve as an example of how to approach the prob 
lem of defining and developing a small satellite system in order 
to improve the actual fire monitoring and fire parameter as 
sessment situation. 
The micro-satellite BIRD (Bi-spectral InfraRed Detection) is 
used to describe a possible approach for detection and quantita 
tive characterisation of high-temperature events like vegetation 
fires on the Earth surface (BrieB et al., 2003). BIRD was suc 
cessfully piggyback launched by an Indian Polar Satellite 
Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C3) in a circular sun-synchronous orbit 
with an altitude of 572 km on 22 October 2001. 
Both the global change scientific community and the fire fight 
ing authorities demand new and dedicated space-borne fire 
observation sensors with resolution of 50-100 m for lo 
cal/regional monitoring and of a few hundred metres for global 
observations that would be able to detect fires from a few to a 
few tens of square metres and to estimate quantitatively vari 
ables such as location, temperature, area, energy release, associ 
ated aerosol and gaseous emissions. 
The existing satellite sensors with 3-4 pm mid-infrared channels 
(AVHRR/NOAA, MODIS/TERRA, GOES) used so far to 
provide data on active fires on Earth have limited spatial resolu 
tion of 1 km or coarser and a low-temperature saturation of the 
MIR channels (with the exception of MODIS) leading in some 
cases to false alarms and preventing a quantitative characterisa 
tion of larger fires. 
10° J ( 1 i 1 1 1 
10- 2 10- 1 10° 10' 10 2 10 3 
Revisit time [days] 
Figure 4. Spatial and Temporal Requirements for Coastal 
Studies (after Hoepffner) 
As already shown, the application areas are complex which is 
indicated by the wide range of GSDs (Ground Sample Distance), 
revisit times, and spectral requirements. If we concentrate on 
disaster monitoring which can be further split into many catego 
ries, like , 
Fine spatial resolution multi-spectral sensors like TM or ETM 
on Landsat or ASTER/TERRA do not have a 3-4 pm channel, 
the principal channel for daytime fire recognition. Their 2.3 pm 
channels are less sensitive to smouldering fires and more af 
fected by solar reflections. 
The saturation limitations can be avoided using solid state 
infrared detector arrays and real time digital signal processing to 
provide an adaptation of the sensor radiometric dynamic range. 
These are the key elements of new imaging infrared (IR) sen 
sors on BIRD. 
The BIRD small satellite mission is a technology demonstrator 
including new infrared push-broom sensors dedicated to recog 
nition and quantitative characterisation of thermal anomalies on 
the Earth surface. BIRD primary mission objectives are: 
• test of small satellite technologies, such as an attitude con 
trol system using new star sensors and new actuators, an on 
board navigation system based on a new orbit predictor and 
others,test of the latest generation of infrared array sensors 
with an adaptive radiometric dynamic range, 
• detection and scientific investigation of High Temperature 
Events (HTE) such as forest fires, volcanic activity, and 
coal seam fires.