The Issue Of Forest Fires Returns, The Karhutla Monitoring Application Is In The Spotlight

Illustration (Pixabay / Skeeze)

JAKARTA - The issue of forest and land fires (karhutla) that occurred in Sumatra and Kalimantan is back in the spotlight. According to Netray's analysis most of the news sentiment is positive. Including the matter of forest and land fire monitoring innovation through the application.

According to Netray's monitoring, there are 683 articles from 73 media portals discussing the topic of forest and land fires. The reporting category is dominated by disaster issues as much as 60 percent, the government 19 percent and the law 7 percent.

Coverage related to the topic of forest and land fires is centered in Sumatra and Kalimantan. In Sumatra the most coverage is in South Sumatra, Jambi and Riau. Meanwhile in Kalimantan, most of them are in Central Kalimantan and West Kalimantan.

Looking at the chart above, the topic of forest and land fires was widely reported on July 1 to 15, 2020. The peak was on July 6, 2020.

Most of the news sentiment was positive. This is related to President Joko Widodo's appeal to all relevant elements to pay full attention and to anticipate fire-prone areas. In his instructions, Jokowi also asked to take firm action against the perpetrators of clearing land by burning forests.

Prevent via application

The local government also received positive sentiment thanks to the prevention efforts they had launched by making forest and land fire monitoring applications. The application can later detect the start of hotspots directly.

Call it the Lancang Kuning Nusantara application made by the Riau Regional Government. This application can identify hotspots directly by moving personnel in the field.

In addition, there is also a Digital Smoke application made by the Jambi Police. Asap Digital is a fire prevention application platform based on CCTV. Digital CCTV devices can reach an area as far as a radius of 4 km equipped with heat, air and smoke sensors.

Apart from the local government, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) also has a special digital platform to monitor forest and land fires. The platform uses the Fire Weather Index (FWI) from Canada. This index provides an overview of important aspects in increasing the potential for forest fires to occur.