An integrated mobile veld fire detection and sharing platform for Southern Africa

While there are clear efforts towards managing veld fires, it comes as a concern that in Southern Africa, the role of local communities in fire control has weakened and veld fires have grown to be a major threat. Current systems and technologies to share veld fire information have several challenges. These include; being unable to detect burning fires in the forests, poor to almost missing veld fire local alerting systems, and malfunctioning local veld firefighting communities. Against this background, a mobile veld fire detection and sharing application prototype was developed using a qualitative data approach and experimental design. Weather data and scientific models of different areas were used to create fire-danger indices based on forecasted weather data and weather station information on the ground. These were programmed into the system to trigger alerts for the veld fire prediction component. For the identification of already burning fires, this was linked to the MODIS system of firefighting stakeholders (EMA Zimbabwe). Results revealed that conditions that promote veld fires can be predicted and local residents can thus be warned instantly to avoid activities that cause fires. For already burning fires, the mobile application was able to instantly communicate to users registered to the system.