BAIS2: Burned Area Index for Sentinel-2 ^†

Accurate and rapid mapping of fire damaged areas is fundamental to support fire management, account for environmental loss, define planning strategies and monitor the restoration of vegetation. Under climate change conditions, drought severity may trigger tough fire regimes, in terms of number and dimension of fires. In order to deliver rapid information about areas damaged by fires, Burned Area Index (BAI), Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR), and their relative versions have been largely employed in the past to map burned areas from high resolution optical satellite data. The new MSI sensor aboard Sentinel-2 satellites carries more spectral information recorded in the red-edge spectral region, opening the way to the development of new indices for burned area mapping. This study present a newly developed Burned Area Index for Sentinel-2 (BAIS2), based on Sentinel-2 spectral bands, to detect burned areas at 20 m spatial resolution and the design of a processor developed to perform post-fire mapping using Sentinel-2 data. The new index has been tested on various study cases in Italy for summer 2017 fires, and results show a good performance of the index and highlighted critical issues related to the Sentinel-2 data processing.