Assessment on the Use of Meteorological and Social Media Information for Forest Fires Detection and Prediction in Riau, Indonesia

Abstract

Early detection that results in early warning of forest fires occurrences in Indonesia, which are strongly related to land management practices (including peatlands), is necessary to mitigate land and forest fires in Indonesia. Riau has been chosen in this study because of its vulnerability to forest fires. The remoteness of this region is one reason for developing alternative warning tools using meteorological and social media information. This study identified tweets related to fires using carefully selected keywords, geoparsed to select messages relevant to fire occurrences, and binned within several Indonesian sub-regions in Riau Province. Content analysis was performed for 31 related online local newspapers. Assessment to study the correlation between meteorological and Twitter information with the forest fires was conducted. Existing approaches that the BMKG and other Indonesian agencies use to detect fire activities are reviewed, and a novel approach based on crowdsourcing of tweets is proposed. The results show a correlation between meteorological information and Twitter activity with satellites derived hotspot information. The policy implications of these results suggest that information should be included in the fire management system in Indonesia to support fire early detection as part of fire disaster mitigation efforts.

Hotspot Spatial Patterns Using SNNP-VIIRS for Fire Potential Monitoring

“…Tis disaster not only threatens life but also damages buildings [4] and local people's livelihoods [5,6]. Forest and land fres have a detrimental impact on the environment [7][8][9], social and economic [7,9,10], health [9,11], transportation [12], ecosystem damage leading to loss of biodiversity, and land degradation [2,[13][14][15].…”

“…Tis land conversion creates new problems for the Environment and humans, one of which is land fres. As a result of land fres, it can also cause various other issues that result in losses such as social, economic, and human health being disrupted because the smog causes respiratory problems, environmental pollution, and ecosystem damage [12,[51][52][53], transportation system disturbances, conficts between neighboring countries, and others.…”