FRM4Fire

Technology & Science

FRM4FIRE (Fiducial Reference Measurements for Fire) is an ESA-funded project led by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in partnership with King's College London and the University of Southampton.

The project focuses on Fire Radiative Power (FRP) — a measure of the rate of radiative energy released by fires — retrieved from the Sentinel-3 SLSTR satellite sensor. Despite FRP being operationally delivered to services such as the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, current satellite-derived FRP products lack fully traceable, independently validated uncertainty estimates.

FRM4FIRE addresses this gap by developing field measurement protocols and applying a metrological (FIDUCEO) approach to characterise and propagate uncertainty through the entire FRP retrieval chain. Airborne data collected by King's College London over several campagins in Canada is being used to generate reference datasets that will underpin confidence in Sentinel-3 fire observations and lay the groundwork for international FRP validation standards.

Aims

FRM4FIRE aims to produce the first fully metrologically-grounded characterisation of uncertainty in satellite FRP retrievals, focusing on Sentinel-3 SLSTR. This includes developing community-agreed validation protocols and a roadmap for ongoing FRP validation — addressing the current absence of such standards in the fire remote sensing community.

Principal Investigator

Bernardo Mota (NPL)

Investigators

Martin Wooster (KCL)
Farrer Owsley-Brown (KCL)
Gareth Roberts (University of Southampton)

FRM4FIRE is delivered by a partnership of three institutions: the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) (project lead), King's College London (KCL), and the University of Southampton (UoS). The project is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).