Malaysia Window to Cambridge at UKM (MW2C@UKM)
Workshop on Disaster Resilient Cities
APPLICATION FORM (i)
NAME: Muhamad Nur, M.Si
AGE: 27 years old CITIZEN: INDONESIA
JOB TITLE: RESEARCH ASSISTANT
ORGANIZATION: UNIVERSITY OF SRIWIJAYA
ADDRESS: Jl. Raya Palembang Prabumulih KM. 32 Indralaya, Ogan Ilir, Sumatra Selatan,
INDONESIA
COUNTRY: INDONESIA
TEL. NO.: +62 812 7258 2510 EMAIL: muhamadnur.pplh@gmail.com
Please email the completed Application Forms to:
chounsian@gmail.com and cc to syazwaniyhy@gmail.com
Malaysia Window to Cambridge at UKM (MW2C@UKM)
Workshop on Disaster Resilient Cities
APPLICATION FORM (ii)
SHORT ESSAY
Instruction: Before you start, please read and understand Item 4: GUIDELINES FOR CASE STUDIES
Please email the completed Application Forms to:
chounsian@gmail.com and cc to syazwaniyhy@gmail.com
Title: Seasonal Forecasting and Monitoring of Peat Forest Fires Vulnerability Based on GIS information
System
Author(s): Muhamad Nur and Iskhaq Iskandar
Affiliation(s): Department of Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of
Sriwijaya
Email: muhamadnur.pplh@gmail.com
Your text (Not more than 1000 word):
Frequent and large-scale peat fires occur both in Indonesia and in neighboring countries,
particularly in the Kalimantan and Sumatra islands (Field and Shen, 2008; Field et al., 2009;
Schultz et al., 2008). It has considerable impacts on carbon emissions, haze production,
biodiversity, health, and economic activities (Spessa et al., 2015). It caused by various factors,
such as increased human activity and climate extreme events. It is nearly always associated
with El Niño and IOD events. Past studies evaluate that the destructive peat fires in South
Kalimantan and East Sumatra during the exceptionally strong El Niño in 1997/1998 and 2015
rank as some of the largest peak emissions events in recorded history.
More studies are needed, however, to develop methods of both predicting and
monitoring peat fires. Recent advances in seasonal climate forecasting based on the use of
state-of-the-art dynamical models that couple atmosphere, ocean, and land processes and
assimilate a vast range of climate-related earth observation measurement opens up the
possibility of forming a more physical-based method for predicting peat fires and haze events
with several months lead time in Indonesia using some methods.
Several methods have been done by Indonesian government to deal with this issue.
Firstly, stop forest clearance. Stopping forest destruction is one of the easiest and most cost-
effective ways to prevent catastrophic climate change. Indonesian President is also have
vowed to protect peatlands and showed his solidarity by damming a canal to stop the
drainage of a peat forest in Kalimantan and Sumatra Island. Since then, the area has hardly
been affected by this season’s fires. Re-flooding and implementing other water management
measures in critical peatland areas can sharply reduce fire risks. Those methods have been
effectively reduced peat forest fires in Indonesia. However, early warning system to prevent
peat forest fires is needed. Regards to the huge impact of peat forest fire in release carbon
emission to the atmosphere and climate extreme events could not avoided. Therefore, the
purpose of this study is to develop early warning system and peat forest fires forecasting and
predicting method in Sumatra island by analyses of the peat forest fires hazards range
vulnerability system using forest fire danger rating system (FDRS).
FDRS is one of the methods that can provide information on the risk index of forest fires
based on daily weather input data or has been known as Fire Weather Index (FWI). Fire
vulnerability is a common indicator of all factors that affect flammability, fire spread, physical
impact of fire and the difficulty of fire control. This index uses four climate variables. Those
are humidity, ambient temperature, rainfall and mean wind speed. In the humidity index, that
are fine fuel moisture code, duff moisture code and drought code. The last index is fire
behavior index. This index is included initial spread index and build up index.
Prediction system of the peat forest fire vulnerability, at least, a month ahead. The
weather input data of FDRS is needed. Therefore, this system need a numerical weather
prediction (NWP). The output of the NWP is a potential data to predict weather variability. In
the unmeasured area by weather station, modelling data could be used to provide large
spatial information and homogeneous. Weather Research and Forecasting Environmental
Model System (WRF-EMS) is one of the numerical weather prediction model that is well
known as forecasting system. In addition, there are some method to predict peat forest fire
vulnerability. That are normalized difference vegetation index (NDI), drought that is include
land surface temperature, Keetch Byram Drought Index (KBDI),Normalized Difference Water
Index (NDWI), and Standarized Precipitation Index (SPI). It also included Normalized Burn Rtio
(NBR), Ground Water Level (GWL).
Generally, this study will provide a hard copy system: maps and digital maps as the output.
This map is shows an information about the vulnerability peat forest fire area in Sumatra. To
sump up this project, it is start from analyze Ground water level. It could be done by build
sensor in the peat forest area, using satellite data, ground check and Modelling System (WRF).
These data will be used in the FDRS. Then, it could show temporal and spatial information of
the peat forest fire vulnerability as a result. The rest of this project will provide the output as
a web GIS and application that could be use in Android system.
Keywords: Peat Forest, Climate Extreme, FDRS, FWI, WRF-EMS, and GIS Information System
