Burn severity assessment of Rhodes island wildfire with remote sensing data

Forest fires are occurring more regularly and becoming more severe, which will cause significant environmental, economic, and social damage. The advanced information technologies, and especially Geographic Information Systems are contributing to dealing with this considerable world problem. This research aims to evaluate the damage and severity of the wildfire in the Greek island of Rhodes during July 2023. For this research, remote sensing images from the Landsat 8 Satellite Mission were used before and after the fire. It was calculated that the Normalized Burned Ratio index before and after the fire, and the difference in these index values pre- and post-fire. With the Geographic Information System tool for classification, the areas of the Island were classified into High severity, Low severity, Unburned, Regrowth low, and Regrowth high. The area in square kilometers was calculated for each class. The results clearly show that through remote sensing methods and satellite images, the damaged area could be precisely calculated without sending scientists on site. Geographic Information Systems have a significant role in post-event analysis and recovering from disasters, where governments and authorities could strategically plan recovery initiatives and evaluate the level of the damage by using after and before disaster spatial data. The remote sensing methods and spatial analysis have a significant role in disaster management.