Super fun. We at IGIS and the Kellylab are working with Drone Scholars on the #Fly4Fall project. Fly4Fall: A citizen science experiment for crowd sourcing UAV data. 

Consider being a participant! Here are the contributions so far: 

Our colleague Greg Crutsinger at Drone Scholars recently launched an initiative to mobilize the large network of amateur UAV enthusiasts for an exciting campaign called Fly4Fall.

Under the Fly4Fall campaign, amateur drone hobbyists across the globe are invited to take aerial 360 photos with their drone and contribute them to a collection of fall landscapes that will grow over time.

Never taken an aerial 360 photo before? Me either, but fortunately it recently got a whole lot easier with a free iOS app called Hangar 360. The Hangar app flies your DJI drone for you, climbing to the height you program and then taking about 25 photos in a circle at three different angles to the horizon. The whole thing takes about 2 minutes, and you can collect multiple panos per flight. You then land the drone (but don't turn it off just yet!), transfer the photos from the drone to your phone over the WiFi, and then upload the photos to Hangar. Hangar stitches the photos for you in the cloud (also free!), and sends you a link. The results are stunning! See the panoramic photo below of Kearny REC made by IGIS's Robert Johnson earlier this week.

Kearney REC, Fresno County

Inspired by citizen science initiatives like the Christmas Bird Count and Project BudBurst, where large numbers of naturalists record observations in a coordinated way, Fly4Fall is part non-professional science project, part art, part community building, and a whole lot of fun. Crutsinger discussed some of the potential science angles in a recent LinkedIn post.

Full instructions can be found at Fly4Fall.com. Currently, the Hangar app only works on iOS, unfortunately, and only with DJI drones (but the list includes most of the popular ones). Android enthusiasts can check out Litchi, which includes similar functionality but costs $25 and you have to process the images on your own (look for tutorials online).

Of course like any drone flight you have the follow the rules - only fly in permitted areas, don't fly directly over people, and be safe!

We look forward to seeing the Fly4Fall panoramas coming in. Feel free to use the comment box below to share your experiences and thoughts!

Many of us have watched in horror and sadness over the previous week as fires consumed much of the beautiful hills and parts of the towns of Napa and Sonoma Counties. Many of us know people who were evacuated with a few minutes' notice - I met a retired man who left his retirement home with the clothes on his back. Many other friends lost everything - house, car, pets. It was a terrible event - or series of events as there were many active fires. During those 8+ days all of us were glued to our screens searching for up-to-date and reliable information on where the fires were, and how they were spreading. This information came from reputable, reliable sources (such as NASA, or the USFS), from affected residents (from Twitter and other social media), and from businesses (like Planet, ESRI, and Digital Globe who were sometimes creating content and sometimes distilling existing content), and from the media (who were ofen using all of the above). As a spatial data scientist, I am always thinking about mapping, and the ways in which geospatial data and analysis plays an increasingly critical role in disaster notification, monitoring, and response. I am collecting information on the technological landscape of the various websites, media and social media, map products, data and imagery that played a role in announcing and monitoring the #TubbsFire, #SonomaFires and #NapaFires. I think a retrospective of how these tools, and in particular how the citizen science aspect of all of this, helped and hindered society will be useful.  

In the literature, the theoretical questions surrounding citizen science or volunteered geography revolve around:

• Accuracy – how accurate are these data? How do we evaluate them?  

• Access – Who has access to the data? Are their technological limits to dissemination?

• Bias (sampling issues)/Motivation (who contributes) are critical.

• Effectiveness – how effective are the sites? Some scholars have argued that VGI can be inhibiting. 

• Control - who controls the data, and how and why?

• Privacy - Are privacy concerns lessened post disaster?

I think I am most interested in the accuracy and effectiveness questions, but all of them are important.  If any of you want to talk more about this or have more resources to discuss, please email me: maggi@berkeley.edu, or Twitter @nmaggikelly.

Summary so far. This will be updated as I get more information.

Outreach from ANR About Fires

• ANR has a number of programs dedicated to fire preparedness, recovery, and prevention.

Core Geospatial Technology During Fires

• Wildfire products

  • Fire perimeters from https://www.geomac.gov/services.shtml

    • The Active Fire Perimeters layer is a product of Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination (GeoMAC). In order to give fire managers near real-time information, fire perimeter data is updated daily based upon input from incident intelligence sources, GPS data, infrared (IR) imagery from fixed wing and satellite platforms.”

  • MODIS hot spots from USFS Active Fire Mapping Program. MODIS The MODIS instrument is on board NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra (EOS AM) and Aqua (EOS PM) satellites. In addition to lots of other data, MODIS delivers Channel 31 brightness temperature (in Kelvins) of a hotspot/active fire pixel.

    • For more on how these are made: http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=b4ce4179b04f47e4ba79e234205565c1

    • Source: https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/googleearth.php

• WebGIS sites

  • SFGate: http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2017/interactive-map-wine-country-fires/

  • ESRI: http://www.arcgis.com/apps/PublicInformation/index.html?appid=4ae7c683b9574856a3d3b7f75162b3f4

  • Sonoma County: http://sonomamap.maps.arcgis.com/a…/webappviewer/index.html…

• Media using maps (super short list)

  • http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2017/interactive-map-wine-country-fires/

  • NYTimes: Minutes to Escape: How One California Wildfire Damaged So Much So Quickly. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/21/us/california-fire-damage-map.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

  • NYTimes: How California's Most Destructive Wildfire Spread, Hour by Hour. OCT. 21, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/21/us/california-fire-damage-map.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

  • SFGate focusing on SkyIMD: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/incredible-aerial-photos-wine-country-fires-12285123.php

• Social media

  • Twitter: #sonomafires, #napafires, #tubbsfire

  • Flickr: SonomaFires, TubbsFires, NapaFires, etc.

Core Technology for Post-Fire Impact

• High resolution imagery collection and analysis

  • From satellite

    • Planet has made fire imagery available: https://www.planet.com/pulse/northern-california-wildfire-satellite-data-available-for-access/

    • Digital Globe + MapBox made a post-fire tool: (Author: @robinkraft

      Email: rkraft4@gmail.com, Github repo, Source: Overview News // DigitalGlobe 2017): https://robinkraft.github.io/norcal-fires-imagery/compare.html;  https://blog.mapbox.com/santa-rosa-fire-satellite-imagery-a31b6dfefdf8

    • Digital Globe - Open Data Program: https://www.digitalglobe.com/opendata

    • Sonoma Veg Map Program has a few links to interesting stuff including ArcGIS Server Drone and Digital Globe Imagery: http://sonomavegmap.org/blog/2017/10/17/fires/

    • Also: http://sonomamap.maps.arcgis.com/home/search.html?q=owner%3Akarmstrong_SonomaMap&restrict=false&start=1&sortOrder=desc&sortField=relevance

  • From aircraft

    • I know SkyIMD was flying the entire time.

    • http://www.skyimd.com/napa-sonoma-fire-imagery-map-2/

    • First Map - Flights 10/11-10/14/17 Here: http://www.skyimd.com/napa-sonoma-fire-imagery-map/
    • Second Map - Flight 10/20/17 - Here: http://www.skyimd.com/napa-sonoma-fire-imagery-map-2/

  • From drone:

    • Greg Crutsinger from @droneScholars made this available: Aftermath of #TubbsFire: https://www.mapbox.com/bites/00382/#18/38.4763/-122.74861

    • Open Aerial Map has one drone image not sure the source https://map.openaerialmap.org/#/-122.7497720718384,38.471986484020334,16/square/023010201213/59e62be93d6412ef7220c4c0?_k=hm0j7l

Hot on the heels of a very successful three-day DroneCamp workshop, IGIS has launched a new email list for people interested in using drones for mapping and data collection.

Drone Mapping California is a moderated email list intended to share news, information, and questions about using drones for mapping and data collection. That covers a lot - technology, training, regulations, hardware, software, analytical techniques, etc. We hope this list will be a channel through which new and seasoned drone operators and researchers can share and grow their knowledge and expertise.

The list has a California focus, but all are welcome. If you are interested in collecting data with drones, please subscribe here! IGIS will administer the list for the foreseeable future, including moderating messages to prevent spam, but we are always open to comments and suggestions.

Top: Matrice 100 with dual RGB and multispectral sensors
Bottom: mNDGI image of a field at Desert Research and Extension Center
Photos by Sean Hogan