Jakarta, Aug. 26 -- Indonesia's National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) is urging wider use of satellite and geoinformatics technology to detect and tackle forest and land fires, officials said Wednesday.

Rokhis Khomarudin, head of BRIN's Geoinformatics Research Center, said geoinformatics technology plays a crucial role in managing forest and land fires.

Its first role is to serve as an early warning system based on weather prediction models, he said.

"We can develop daily fire-weather and drought-risk indexes to predict fire risks before they occur," Rokhis said.

The climate monitoring model has been developed and is now fully operated by Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), he said.

The second...