A cost-benefit analysis of WildFireSat, a wildfire monitoring satellite mission for Canada.

In anticipation of growing wildfire management challenges, the Canadian government is investing in WildFireSat, an Earth observation satellite mission designed to collect data in support of Canadian wildfire management. Although costs of the mission can be reasonably estimated, the benefits of such an investment are unknown. Here we forecast the possible benefits of WildFireSat via an avoided cost approach. We consider five socio-economic components: suppression costs (fixed and variable), timber losses, property, asset and infrastructure losses, evacuation costs, and smoke related health costs. Using a Monte Carlo analysis, we evaluated a range of possible changes to these components based on expert opinions. The resulting Net Present Value (NPV) estimates depend on the presumed impact of using WildFireSat decision support data products, with pessimistic and conservative assumptions generating mission costs that typically exceed potential benefits by 1.16 to 1.59 times, while more optimistic assumptions generate benefits in excess of costs by 8.72 to 10.48 times. The analysis here excludes some possibly significant market and non-market impacts expected from WildFireSat due to data limitations; accounting for these additional impacts would likely generate positive NPVs under even cautious impact assumptions.

Development of the User Requirements for the Canadian WildFireSat Satellite Mission.

In 2019 the Canadian Space Agency initiated development of a dedicated wildfire monitoring satellite (WildFireSat) mission. The intent of this mission is to support operational wildfire management, smoke and air quality forecasting, and wildfire carbon emissions reporting. In order to deliver the mission objectives, it was necessary to identify the technical and operational challenges which have prevented broad exploitation of Earth Observation (EO) in Canadian wildfire management and to address these challenges in the mission design. In this study we emphasize the first objective by documenting the results of wildfire management end-user engagement activities which were used to identify the key Fire Management Functionalities (FMFs) required for an Earth Observation wildfire monitoring system. These FMFs are then used to define the User Requirements for the Canadian Wildland Fire Monitoring System (CWFMS) which are refined here for the WildFireSat mission. The User Requirements are divided into Observational, Measurement, and Precision requirements and form the foundation for the design of the WildFireSat mission (currently in Phase-A, summer 2020).