South African developed technology will be in action to assist with the Western Cape fire season now in full swing.
The CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) K-Line fire sensor is licensed to Autonosky and, as an integrated component of the Autono 1 drone, will assist what the Pretoria-headquartered research and development think tank calls Western Cape Fire Emergency Services [presumably the provincial Directorate Disaster Management and Fire and Rescue Services] to detect fires ahead of them becoming a danger to people and property.
The CSIR’s K-line technology is an optical imaging system that uses remote sensing techniques to detect potassium light energy emitted from burning vegetation during the combustion phase of fires. Potassium, a chemical element with the periodic symbol K, is released as light energy from fires and can be easily isolated using silicon-based detectors with peak sensitivity within the near-infrared spectrum. This technique has proven valuable for developing compact, affordable remote sensing systems for ground and airborne fire detection.
Stakeholders involved in the annual Western Cape fire season are Working on Fire (WOF); Mpumalanga-based Leading Edge Aviation, operators of the only Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk in South Africa; the Western Cape provincial government; Cape Town Metro; SANParks as well as the SA Air Force (SAAF) and SA Navy (SAN). Another is Fire Watch Cape Town which bills itself as a group whose only focus is to issue alert when fires start and provide accurate information on fires in the south Cape peninsula.
The fire season in the province runs from December to May when summer winds and hot and dry weather create favourable conditions for wildfires.
Proof of the efficiency of the CSIR K-Line technology goes back to 2018 when it began detecting wildfires from space on board South African ZACUBE-2 satellite.
Since early December a number of uncontrolled fires have, among others, razed informal settlements and turned hectares of fynbos and grazing into ash.
In 2024 wildfires in Western Cape damaged over 52 000 ha of land, of which 15 587 was protected land under the aegis of Cape Nature.
