Lands Minister Brendon Grylls said today that FireWatch, operated by Landgate, was Australia's most advanced online fire monitoring service.
"FireWatch uses satellite imagery to provide near real-time fire information," Mr Grylls said.
"This includes fire hotspot locations; email alerts; lightning strikes; burnt area mapping; vegetation greenness and dryness indexes; integrated with other spatial information including roads and property boundaries.
"It supplies critical information to Australia's emergency services, land management professionals, farmers, tourism operators, indigenous communities and pastoralists in discovering, tracking and managing prescribed burning and bushfires.
"Armed with this information they can better protect and manage their property and interests to effectively mitigate the incidence and impact of bushfires."
The Minister said the effectiveness of FireWatch's online service was demonstrated by its huge popularity with people living in remote and regional Western Australia.
"FireWatch is used operationally by the Fire and Emergency Services Authority and the Department of Environment and Conservation," he said.
"It is also used by fire agencies in other States and Territories as FireWatch provides national coverage of fire information.
"During the recent fires in Victoria, the hits on the FireWatch site increased ten-fold, mostly from Victoria and New South Wales."
The Minister said that Landgate intended to investigate how to integrate FireWatch with the predictive fire modelling system developed by The University of Western Australia through the Cooperative Research Centre for Bushfires.
"FireWatch, upgraded in this way, would provide an early warning system showing the current location of fire hot spots and predictive modelling of future fire activity," he said.
"Combined with an SMS and radio broadcast capability, this will assist families and organisations in fire prone areas to make crucial, informed and early decisions on whether to stay or go."
Landgate's FireWatch has won multiple awards including a Premier's Award and a Commonwealth Government Technology Productivity Gold Award and was recently endorsed by the State Mitigation Committee.
Landgate, with support from AusAid, under the Indonesia Australia Forest Carbon Partnership, is providing FireWatch technology to the Government of Indonesia to monitor fire activity in the region.
Members of the public and businesses can register with FireWatch and receive automatic email notification of fire activity within a defined radius of their property.
To visit the FireWatch website go to http://firewatch.landgate.wa.gov.au
Minister's office: 9213 7000
