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Sept
09, 2002
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an
online newsletter for and by NOAA employees
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Employee of Month Cited For Mitigating Recent Surge Of Western Wildfires 
wildfires, Donna McNamara has been named NOAA Employee of the Month.
As a physical scientist in the Office of Satellite Data Processing and Distribution
at the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS),
Donna is being lauded for innovative and tireless efforts to support both
firefighters and the western communities imperiled by this year's severe
fire season. As wildfires surged through Colorado in early June - and before they spread to additional western states - Donna worked "above and beyond" to escalate development of the Fire Hazard Mapping System that enables analysts to detect fire and smoke that can be mitigated by emergency response personnel. Her contributions provided a more frequent fire mitigation product that proved indispensable during this very difficult summer. Already Donna had led the development and acquisition of methods to use NESDIS and NASA satellite imagery and other technologies to identify and mitigate wildfires and smoke plumes in near real-time. Prior to Donna's efforts, monitoring wildfires and smoke by satellite data was limited to automated fire detection algorithms that were plagued by numerous false positive responses and/or manually detecting smoke and fires in limited areas. The result was low resolution fire analysis posted to the Internet. Neither of these techniques would have been adequate in addressing the recent rash of western wildfires. To swiftly advance development of the Fire Hazard Mapping System, Donna worked with NESDIS satellite meteorologists and contractors and scientists at NASA, University of Maryland and U.S. Geological Survey. With automated detection systems, advanced geo-location software permits an analysis of fires and smoke throughout the entire contiguous United States and Alaska while minimizing false detects. It produces a Geographic Information Systems based map showing fires that can be resolved by emergency response personnel right down to the county level. |
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