Updated ARIA Map of CA Camp Fire Damage

The Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, created this Damage Proxy Map (DPM) depicting areas of Northern California that are likely damaged (shown by red and yellow pixels) as a result of the Camp Fire. The map is derived from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). The pre-event images were taken before (November 4, 2018) and the post-event image was acquired during the fire (6pm November 16, 2018, both local time).

The map covers an area of 54 miles x 36 miles (87 km x 58 km), indicated with the big red polygon. Each pixel measures about 33 yards x 33 yards (30 m x 30 m). The color variation from yellow to red indicates increasingly more significant ground surface change. Preliminary validation was done by comparing to the structural damage records of the CAL FIRE Story Map. This damage proxy map should be used as guidance to identify damaged areas, and may be less reliable over vegetated areas including forests and farmlands. For example, the scattered small colored pixels over vegetated areas may be false positives, and the lack of colored pixels over trees does not necessarily mean no damage.

Sentinel-1 data were accessed through the Copernicus Open Access Hub. The image contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA and analyzed by the NASA-JPL/Caltech ARIA team. This research was carried out at JPL funded by NASA.

For more information about ARIA, visit http://aria.jpl.nasa.gov.