Phase-2 Pilot Authorized — Kolaghat, Purba Medinipur · Feb 26, 2026

FROM
ORBIT
TO ACTION

Satellite Aided Thermal Anomaly Response Kit

SATARK detects crop fire anomalies from space, upscales them 200× with AI, and dispatches a Guardian to the exact field — in under 30 minutes. We don't police farmers. We give them a way out.

See How It Works Join the Mission →

30min

Orbit to Intervention

200×

AI Upscaling

10K+

Families Protected

30+

Student Guardians

Global Advisors

Scroll

Origin

Not a
surveillance
tool.

Stubble burning bleeds India $24 billion annually. The official response is broken — satellites record, police fine, but there are zero logistics to actually stop the fires.

"The matchstick costs ₹1. It is the only technology within her budget. SATARK is not about catching her; it is about giving her a second option."— Field Validation Report, 2026

Our field survey across 34 farming households found 0 of 34 knew government-subsidised machinery (CHCs) existed — despite 36 centres operating in their district. The solution isn't absent. The logistics bridge is.

Satellite

INSAT-3DR · GK-2A · every 15 min

Aided

SwinIR transformer · cascaded ×200

Thermal

Heat mapped to exact crop boundaries

Anomaly

LULC-filtered · zero false positives

Response

WhatsApp dispatch · Guardian network

Kit

Open-source · free · built for India

The Logic Loop — Orbit to Action in ~30 min

Satellite DetectionINSAT-3DR & GK-2A feeds every 15 minutes — 2× faster than NASA VIIRS daily passes.

Intelligence

SwinIR AI UpscalingBlurry 4km pixels reconstructed via cascaded Swin Transformer to precise 20m coordinates. ~120ms inference.

SATARK PRIME

LULC Precision FilterCross-checked on Land Use Land Cover maps. Factory or road → discard. Agricultural land → alert.

Zero False Positives

Guardian DispatchWhatsApp API with GPS + village name + live Maps link. No login. One tap to act.

Dispatch

Situational ActionHappy Seeder, wind-guided Smart Burn, or immediate extinguish — dictated by atmospheric reality.

Response

Early Warning + AI Engine

We see the fire
before it starts.

SATARK's intelligence pipeline starts weeks before any flame. NDVI tracking detects the Green-to-Brown crop shift — alerting administration to dispatch balers days before the farmer feels forced to burn.

Step 1 · 14 Days Before

NDVI Green-to-Brown Detection

We track Normalized Difference Vegetation Index via Sentinel-2. When a field shifts from active crop green to post-harvest brown, SATARK flags it as a high-risk burn candidate — days before the matchstick is considered.

Step 2 · AI Engine

Cascaded SwinIR — The Mitra Bridge

Instead of a single 4km→20m jump (which causes AI hallucination — as warned by Dr. B.K. Mohan, IIT Bombay), we built a 3-step ladder: MODIS stabilises at 1km, Landsat-8 teaches heat at 100m, Sentinel-2 pins fire to farm boundaries at 20m. x200 total upscaling. 120ms inference.

Step 3 · IoT Ground Truth

SATARK SENTRY Mk I — School Nodes

Solar ESP32 nodes deployed at village schools track micro-wind corridors and temperature inversions in real time. If smoke drifts away from the village, a controlled Smart Burn is approved. If the atmosphere is stagnant (inversion mode), immediate extinguish is ordered. 50-node pilot authorized by BDO Feb 2026.

Step 4 · Domain Adaptation

Trained on California, Built for Bengal

Indian farm fires vanish too fast for deep learning datasets. We mined 32,000+ images from California's 2020 August Complex Fire to teach the AI the physics of heat — then domain-adapted using Bengal LULC data per Dr. Adway Mitra (IIT Kharagpur) to recognise Bengal's unique spectral fire signature.

Sentinel-2 False Color — Purba Medinipur Dec 24 2025

Live Satellite Data · Sentinel-2 L2A False Color

Dec 24, 2025 · Purba Medinipur. Dark patches = harvested/burnt fields. Smoke plume visible upper-left. Active crop = deep red. This is the data SATARK's NDVI pipeline processes. Credit: EU / Copernicus Sentinel 2026.

West Bengal Fire Radiative Power Trend 2020-2026

VIIRS Data · West Bengal FRP 2020–2026

Total Fire Radiative Power (Megawatts). March–April and November harvest windows drive recurring spikes. SATARK's deployment is targeted at these exact windows — when logistics intervention prevents the most burns.

Hardware · SATARK SENTRY Mk I

Solar ESP32 node with MQ gas sensor and DHT humidity probe. Deployed at village schools as micro-climate observatories. Enables hyper-local Smart Burn decisions — what commercial weather apps can't see at farm scale.

Operational Flow

The 4-Step Shield.

SATARK doesn't just watch the fire — we stop the match. A complete prevention-to-response system that manages the crisis before it burns.

Orbital Early Warning

NDVI tracks the Green-to-Brown crop shift. Alerts admin to dispatch balers days before the farmer feels forced to burn. Prevention before the harvest window opens.

Friendly Voice First

Soil Health Cards and Subsidy Forms delivered before harvest season. Trust built first. Ensures SATARK alerts are received as help, not surveillance. The 11th Gift protocol in action.

Ground Guardian Dispatch

SwinIR pins the exact farm. Guardian dispatched. If machinery is missing, they guide a Smart Burn using SENTRY IoT wind data — smoke diverted away from villages.

The Trust Card

Physical cards track cooperation. Engineers a systemic shift — State becomes partner, not punisher. Trust Cards earn priority access to government machinery and subsidies.

The Scale

An invisible
gas chamber.

The Himalayas and Vindhyas trap the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Smoke flows east into a blind alley. West Bengal is the sink — and VIIRS data shows a 200% rise in local fires. We are now producing our own.

$24B

Annual economic bleed

Lost soil microbiome, crop damage, fertilizer addiction, health costs — every year

5.3

Years of life stolen

From every child in the Indo-Gangetic Plain by toxic air alone

140MT

Carbon bomb — annually

More CO₂ in two harvest weeks than Sweden emits in a full year

"The smoke chokes the breath out of me. We know it is poison. But if we do not burn, we do not plant. And if we do not plant, we do not eat."

— Majidan Bibi, Farmer · Kolaghat Block, Purba Medinipur · Field Validation Report 2026

Sk Reezaal Arafat receiving Phase-2 authorization from BDO Kolaghat

Official Authorization — Phase-2 Pilot · Feb 26, 2026

Sk Reezaal Arafat with BDO Shri Amit Kumar Chand · Kolaghat Development Block, Purba Medinipur

Government Mandate

From
fine to
forecast.

On February 26, 2026, the BDO of Kolaghat officially authorized Phase-2 deployment. This is the same network the state uses to fine farmers — now repurposed to protect them. A pivot of personnel, not money.

50-node IoT pilot grid authorized across Kolaghat Block — LoRaWAN SENTRY sensors on Gram Panchayat offices and flood shelters.

School access granted — Atal Tinkering Labs authorized for device assembly and Student Technical Team formation.

Zero financial liability to the block. Real-time dashboard access continuously provided to Block Office.

All Gram Panchayat Pradhans formally requested to provide logistical cooperation to the deployment team.

The Mandate

If a matchstick costs ₹1,
the solution must be free.

Three phases. One goal: institutionalize SATARK as government policy. We aim to recover the 5.3 years of life expectancy stolen from 500 million people by toxic air.

Active Now

The Build

Phase 1 · Current

AI training on 32,000+ California wildfire images adapted for Bengal. Trust audit complete (n=34 farms). First indigenous Bengal fire dataset locked. BDO + ADA authorization secured. SENTRY Mk I prototyped.

Authorized

The Pilot

Phase 2 · March 2026

4-state deployment during Rabi harvest. 50-node SENTRY IoT grid live across Kolaghat Block. Guardian Network on ground. Live predictions vs government machinery deployment — proving the Efficiency Gap.

Target

Full Scale

Phase 3 · Winter 2026

Full Indo-Gangetic Plain. ISRO Bhuvan integration. Trust Cards as formal government subsidy metric. Architecture open-sourced for Mekong Delta — Thailand and Vietnam. 1 million families protected.

The Team

Built by the
people it serves.

Join the Mission →

Project Director & Founder

Sk Reezaal Arafat

Student from Kolaghat — the same district SATARK serves. Designed the full system: satellite pipeline, SwinIR architecture, Trust Card protocol, Guardian network, and government authorization pathway. Earth Prize Applicant.

Lead Operations · Mumbai

Vidyanand Rathod

Operations Advisor. Strategic oversight and cross-zone coordination.

Lead Ops · Sahid Matangini

Soumyadip Paryali

Field operations lead for Sahid Matangini Block. Farmer engagement and trust-building.

Lead Operations · Panskura

Md Sami Alam

Field operations lead for Panskura zone. Community liaison and deployment.

Field Guardian Manager · Siddha

Sagar Das

Supervises all Field Guardians. Deploys, debriefs, and validates all ground reports.

Director of Narrative & Guardian Interaction Management · Jharkhand

Diya Kumari

Leads storytelling, community communication, and Guardian interaction frameworks across Jharkhand operations.

Area Operations Coordinator

Sujoy Patra

Panskura 1 cluster. Bridges Lead Ops and ground Guardians.

Institutional Attaché

Arif Rahman

Embedded in schools and ATL labs. Manages student technical teams and institutional onboarding.

Field Guardian

Soumyadeep Adhikari

Primary ground unit. Farmer engagement, data collection, and Trust Card protocol.

Field Guardian

Sanket Kuila

Field data collection and farmer liaison in active burn zones.

Guardian Network

Sabarna Samanta Rehan Mallick Srijan Pal Arka Hazra + 30 active guardians and growing →

Scientific Council

Peer-reviewed
before deployment.

Every feature — from SwinIR architecture to the 11th Gift social logic — was engineered in direct response to this council's constraints. SATARK is advised by 11 global experts spanning remote sensing, AI, behavioral economics, ecology, and venture — including Tyler Cowen (George Mason / Emergent Ventures), Shruti Rajagopalan (Emergent Ventures India), Kailash Nadh (CTO, Zerodha), Michael Gibson (1517 Fund), Soren Monroe-Anderson (Neros), and Prof. Pallavi Singh. Core technical advisors below.

Northeastern University · Harvard

Dr. Daniel Aldrich

Professor & Director of Resilience Studies

Trust isn't built during the crisis; it's spent during the crisis. The intervention must come from a trusted local source, not a surveillance apparatus.

CSRE, IIT Bombay

Dr. B.K. Mohan

Professor, Centre of Studies in Resources Engineering

Do not chase impossible resolution. Super-resolving 4km to 200m is the absolute physical limit. Beyond that, data becomes noise.

IIT Kharagpur

Dr. Adway Mitra

Professor of Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence

Domain adaptation is a must. Pre-train on US LULC data to learn terrain features before attempting thermal detection in Bengal.

Columbia University

Dr. Ruth DeFries

Co-Founding Dean & Professor of Ecology and Sustainable Development

Farmers are not villains; they are economic actors. There must be an economic incentive and a logistics bridge to make collection possible.

Zerodha · FOSS Tech Leader

Kailash Nadh

CTO, Zerodha

Open-source architecture and lean engineering — building public-good technology that scales without corporate capture.

Neros

Soren Monroe-Anderson

Co-Founder & CEO, Neros

Early-stage climate ventures succeed when they build trust infrastructure before product infrastructure — community first, technology second.

FROM
ORBIT
TO ACTION

Not a
surveillance
tool.

We see the fire
before it starts.

The 4-Step Shield.

An invisible
gas chamber.

From
fine to
forecast.

If a matchstick costs ₹1,
the solution must be free.

Built by the
people it serves.

Peer-reviewed
before deployment.

From the
ground.

Stop being
a victim of
the smoke.

FROMORBITTO ACTION

Not asurveillancetool.

We see the firebefore it starts.

The 4-Step Shield.

An invisiblegas chamber.

Fromfine toforecast.

If a matchstick costs ₹1,the solution must be free.

Built by thepeople it serves.

Peer-reviewedbefore deployment.

From theground.

Stop beinga victim ofthe smoke.

FROM
ORBIT
TO ACTION

Not a
surveillance
tool.

We see the fire
before it starts.

An invisible
gas chamber.

From
fine to
forecast.

If a matchstick costs ₹1,
the solution must be free.

Built by the
people it serves.

Peer-reviewed
before deployment.

From the
ground.

Stop being
a victim of
the smoke.