The Canadian WildFireSat mission is the first satellite system specifically designed to provide timely operational fire suppression intelligence to Canadians Incident Management Teams (IMTs) at the most appropriate time of day to support operations. As such allows for tailored bushfire management outcomes which are not possible with existing multi-purpose systems. Given Australia does not have access to such tailored information, WildFireSat could provide key bushfire management information in Australia if proper mechanisms were put in place for Australia to receive WildFireSat satellite data.

This report assesses the suitability of the WildFireSat mission for Australia and identified that the current WildFireSat mission design will not have sufficient coverage in Australia and will not collect the data at Australia’s peak fire activity or delivered early enough for Australian Incident Management Teams to incorporate the information in their planning reports. Additionally, WildFireSat science products would need to be evaluated and quite likely re-calibrated in Australia to increase the confidence and credibility of the products. Finally, a potential challenge is to manage the amount of raw data generated by WildFireSat for Australia.

The report concludes by giving 6 recommendations to address those issues and highlighting opportunities for Australia to collaborate on implementing those recommendations with the provision of ground stations for direct downlink, creating joined Canadian-Australian science teams and augmenting the WidFireSat fire monitoring mission with a prediction capability enabled by the Australian Ozfuel sensor allowing aspects of pre-, during- and post- fire stages to be addressed in a more integrated manner.