Assessment on the Use of Meteorological and Social Media Information for Forest Fire Detection and Prediction in Riau, Indonesia

In this study, tweets related to fires in Riau, Sumatra, were identified using carefully selected keywords for the 2014–2019 timeframe. The TAGGS algorithm was applied, which allows for geoparsing based on the user’s nationality and hometown and on direct referrals to specific locations such as name of province or name of city in the message itself. Online newspapers covering Riau were analyzed for the year 2019 to provide additional information about the reasons why fires occurred and other factors, such as impact on people’s health, animal mortality related to ecosystem disruption, visibility, decrease in air quality and limitations in the government firefighting response. Correlation analysis between meteorological information, Twitter activity and satellite-derived hotspots was conducted. The existing approaches that BMKG and other Indonesian agencies use to detect fire activity are reviewed and a novel approach for early fire detection is proposed based on the crowdsourcing of tweets. The policy implications of these results suggest that crowdsourced data can be included in the fire management system in Indonesia to support early fire detection and fire disaster mitigation efforts