Work

AVIRIS‐3 Rapid Response to January 2025 Los Angeles Wildfires

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Wildfires in wildland‐urban interfaces (WUIs) are a growing concern due to their devastating impact on human communities and ecosystems. Low‐latency impact assessment is critical for wildfire response, yet immediate access to fire‐affected communities can be limited. Here, we demonstrate that unmixing char/ash fractional cover using imaging spectroscopy data can support rapid structural damage assessment. Using acquisitions over the 2025 Eaton Fire burn scar collected by the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer 3 (AVIRIS‐3), we demonstrate that a generic spectral endmember library is sufficient for binary structural damage classification between undamaged and destroyed buildings with an accuracy of 86.3%. Incorporating locally collected Eaton Fire endmembers into the library improves the accuracy by 1.3%. This demonstrates the feasibility of assessing structural damage from airborne imaging spectroscopy to rapidly inform post‐fire response and recovery efforts in WUI communities.

Source: Geophysical Research Letters

DOI: 10.1029/2025gl118756