SCC-PG: Smart and Safe Prescribed Burning for Rangeland and Farmland Communities

长期以来，中西部的农民和牧场主一直将规定的火灾作为土地管理工具。它通过补充土壤、增加饲料产量、控制有害寄生虫和保护草原免受入侵性过度生长来帮助耕作和放牧。土地管理者也越来越多地使用它来减少野火的风险。尽管规定的火灾有许多好处，但规定的燃烧事件存在健康和安全问题，包括烟雾对当地社区造成的空气污染，以及逃逸和无法控制的火灾造成的财产损失和人员伤害。这项规划补助金使研究能够开发一个创新的社区传感，规划，学习基础设施，以支持智能和安全的规定燃烧的社区使用规定的火灾进行土地管理。拟议的研究将为社区提供信息丰富的指南和智能网络连接，供土地所有者优化规划和协调规定的火灾、收集和共享数据，并培训土地所有者学习最有效的焚烧方法。该项目的研究成果将对草原保护、野生动物栖息地和环境保护产生更广泛的影响。拟议的研究将基于一个包括多个层的框架：1）多尺度传感层，用于收集来自三个异构源的数据：卫星，无人机系统（UAS）和人群感知; 2）数据融合层，用于融合硬传感器数据（来自无人机系统和卫星）3）用于燃烧效率和烟雾影响建模、时空燃料映射和估计以及火灾行为建模的建模和估计层; 4）智能和安全的规划层，以支持规定的燃烧事件的规划，以及5）社区用例层，涵盖规划，培训，意识和推广。该研究小组将与堪萨斯的几个规定的燃烧社区合作-包括规定的燃烧协会，农民和其他土地所有者，消防员-以及该州的环境保护机构-以开发和评估拟议的研究和试点方法。该项目还将建立一个开放的数据存储库，存储火灾和其他传感数据，与研究人员和其他利益相关者共享。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Prescribed fire has long been used by farmers and ranchers in the Midwest as a land management tool. It helps farming and grazing by replenishing soil, increasing forage production, controlling harmful parasites, and protecting prairies from invasive overgrowth. It is also increasingly used by land managers to reduce the risk of wildfires. Despite the many benefits of prescribed fires, there are health and safety concerns for prescribed burning events, including air pollution to local communities caused by smoke, and damage of properties and injury of people resulted from escaped and uncontrollable fires. This planning grant enables research to develop an innovative community sensing, planning, & learning infrastructure to support smart and safe prescribed burning for communities that use prescribed fires for land management. The proposed research will serve communities as an informative guide and smart cyber connection for landowners to optimally plan and coordinate their prescribed fires, collect and share data, and train landowners to learn the most effective burn approaches. The research outcomes of this project will make a broader impact on grassland preservation, wildlife habitat, and environmental protection. The proposed research will be based on a framework that comprises multiple layers: 1) a multi-scale sensing layer to collect data from three heterogeneous sources: satellite, Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), and crowdsensing; 2) a data fusion layer to fuse hard sensor data (from UAS and satellite) with soft data (human reports and observations from crowdsensing); 3) a modeling and estimation layer for burn effectiveness and smoke impact modeling, spatiotemporal fuel mapping and estimation, and fire behavior modeling; 4) a smart and safe planning layer to support planning of prescribed burning events, and 5) a community use cases layer covering planning, training, awareness, and outreach. The research team will work collaboratively with several prescribed burning communities in Kansas--including a prescribed burning association, farmers and other landowners, firefighers-, and the the state's environmental protection agency--to develop and evaluate the proposed research and piloting approach. The project will also establish an open data repository hosting fire and other sensing data to share with the community of researchers and other stakeholders.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.