Effective monitoring requied to control forest fires: Roy

The Times of India
August 22, 2010

Effective use of geoinformatics tool for controlling forest fire is the need of the hour, said P S Roy, dean, Department of Space, the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS).

Roy was speaking at a workshop organised by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing jointly with Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics on Saturday.

Roy said, “The monitoring system for forests fire in India needs to step up its activities. A total of 55 per cent of India’s forests areprone to fire and satellite of high temporal resolution are needed for effective monitoring.” He suggested a new approach in monitoring forest fires and one among them was building national and regional programmes. “Development of national and regional fire management systems and fire policies require updated inputs by the fire science and technology research community. Also, establish communication network and integrate people participation as it will enable fast responses in fire management.” TNN