Credits, sources & limits

Data

• Active fire detections: NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System): VIIRS 375 m sensors (NOAA-20, NOAA-21, Suomi-NPP) and MODIS 1 km (Terra, Aqua), NRT feed. We thank NASA LANCE/ESDIS for making this data available.
• Base map: © CARTO · © OpenStreetMap contributors (fallback: OpenFreeMap).
• Aircraft tracking: ADS-B positions of the French civil-protection fleet via adsb.lol. Coverage depends on ground receivers: an aircraft missing from the map may be flying. Trajectories prior to 6 August 2026 come from the same network's daily archives (globe_history, ODbL 1.0). 3D models: Canadair provided by the publisher; “Bombardier Dash Q400 - Qantas Link” by Sofyan Kurniawan (CC BY); “EC 135” by GRIP420 (CC BY); “A400M” by XRTL (CC BY); “Air Tractor AT-502” by AlexMish (CC BY-NC), rescaled to the AT-802. Aircraft photos: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY and CC BY-SA (Cjp24, Pedro Aragão, Marie-Lan Taÿ Pamart); A400M Atlas by Laurent Marboeuf; Air Tractor AT-802 Fire Boss by Global Jet; Beechcraft King Air 200 (F-HCEV, DGAC) by Monaam Ben Fredj.
• Satellite imagery: World Imagery © Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics and the GIS community.

Method

The map distinguishes two objects. A hot pixel is a raw satellite detection: a thermal anomaly seen by a sensor at a given moment. Its colour follows the fire radiative power (FRP, in megawatts): pale yellow for a weak fire, deep red for extreme blazes; in wide view the height of the 3D columns also follows FRP. When zooming in, its real ground footprint is shown (scan×track rectangle provided by FIRMS, ~375 m for VIIRS, ≥1 km for MODIS) over satellite imagery. The fire event (white circle) aggregates these detections by spatial proximity: DBSCAN clustering in the database (PostGIS ST_ClusterDBSCAN, 2,500 m radius in Web Mercator projection, minimum 3 detections, 48-hour sliding window), recomputed after every ingestion.

Data is stored in WGS 84 (EPSG:4326) and served as vector tiles generated in Web Mercator (EPSG:3857). Since the clustering radius is expressed in Mercator metres, it corresponds to a shorter ground distance at high latitudes (~1,770 m at 45°).

Limits to know

• Latency: the FIRMS NRT feed is available about 3 hours after satellite acquisition. The map is not an operational alerting tool.
• A hot pixel is not always a wildfire: industrial flares, steelworks, volcanoes or sun glint can trigger detections. Grouping into events (≥ 3 detections) filters part of these false positives.
• Resolution: 375 m (VIIRS) and 1 km (MODIS). A pixel does not outline the fire, and small fires or fires under cloud cover can escape detection.
• Temporal coverage: polar satellites pass roughly twice a day per satellite over a given point; a fire can be active between two passes with no recent detection.

Technology

Next.js (App Router, TypeScript) · MapLibre GL JS · deck.gl (interleaved rendering, FRP extrusion) · PostgreSQL/PostGIS (vector tiles ST_AsMVT, clustering ST_ClusterDBSCAN) · TailwindCSS.

Planned evolutions

Geostationary sources (Meteosat SEVIRI, GOES ABI: 10-15 min cadence, but 2-3 km resolution and more false positives) and EFFIS/Copernicus burnt-area perimeters.

What the map costs

Satellite data is open and free; serving it is not: server, database and vector tiles amount to about €200 a month. The GISFire Pro subscription covers them; the public map stays free and ad-free for everyone.