BAI

Summary

Calculates the Burn Area Index (BAI) from a multiband raster object and returns a raster object with the index values.

Discussion

The Burn Area Index (BAI) uses the reflectance values in the red and NIR portion of the spectrum to identify the areas of the terrain affected by fire.

BAI = 1/((0.1 -RED)^2 + (0.06 - NIR)^2)

• Red = pixel values from the red band
• NIR = pixel values from the near infrared band

For information about other multiband raster indexes, see the Band Arithmetic raster function.

The referenced raster dataset for the raster object is temporary. To make it permanent, you can call the raster object's save method.

Syntax

BAI (raster, {red_band_id}, {nir_band_id})

Parameter	Explanation	Data Type
raster	The input raster.	Raster
red_band_id	The band ID of the red band. The ID index uses one-based indexing. (The default value is 3)	Integer
nir_band_id	The band ID of the near-infrared band. The ID index uses one-based indexing. (The default value is 4)	Integer

Return Value

Data Type	Explanation
Raster	The output raster object with the BAI values.

Code sample

BAI example

Calculates the Burn Area Index for a Landsat 8 image.

import arcpy

BAI_raster = arcpy.ia.BAI("Landsat8_SurfaceReflectance.tif", red_band_id = 4, nir_band_id = 5)

BAI example

Calculates the Burn Area Index for a Landsat 8 image.

# Import system modules
import arcpy
from arcpy.ia import *

# Set the analysis environments
arcpy.env.workspace = "C:/arcpyExamples/data"

# Set the local variables
in_raster = "landsat8.tif"

# Execute BAI function
out_bai_raster = BAI(in_raster, 3, 4)

# Save the output
out_bai_raster.save("C:/arcpyExamples/outputs/BAI.tif")