Onsite-2007.09.12

RNUS and GIC donated a forest fire monitoring system with remote sensing to GISTDA in Thailand 
Date : Sep 12th, 2007

Information : On September 12, 2007, Dr. Takeuchi and Dr. Vivarad Phonekeo with Geoinformatics Center (GIC) at AIT visited Dr. Chaowalit Silapathong with Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA) of Thailand to install and donate a MODIS-based hotspot information detection and distribution system. This system is developed by Prof. Yoshifumi Yasuoka and Dr. Wataru Takeuchi research group and is designed to monitor hotspot information such as forest fires, volcanic activities and field burning twice a day from space with remote sensing technique. Satellite data used in this study is a suit of MODIS data received at IIS in Tokyo and AIT in Bangkok currently working as a Southeast and East Asia Satellite Observation Network (SEASON). SEASON is designed to monitor both environment and disaster phenomena such as forest fire, flooding, heat island issues, vegetation health, sea surface temperature, atmospheric pollution and so on, over Asian region with continental scale in a near-real time fashion (http://webmodis.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/). This is conducted on behalf of a triangle memorandum of understanding (MOU) among IIS, AIT and GISTDA and is financially supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) under the research project “Solution Oriented Research for Science and Technology (SORST)” initiated by Prof. Yoshifumi Yasuoka from Oct. 2005 – Mar. 2007. This is expected to be a first step to strengthen a relationship among IIS, AIT and GISTDA to bridge science and technology and further efforts are conducted to explore more collaborations on knowledge and technology transfer aspects.

sem_oct_20_2005_02 
Dr. Vivarad Phonekeo, Dr. Wataru Takeuchi,
and Dr.Chaowalit Silapathong (from left to right) are holding together
a MODIS-based hotspot information detection and distribution system