Wildfire Early Notification Map
The National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation created a FireMappers interactive tool, which displays where all active fires are burning, recently contained fires, and regions that have a red flag warning in place.
This map is using dynamic sources of data and is meant to provide a general awareness of wildfire activity for people who are familiar with wildland firefighting data (e.g. public safety professionals). This map is not incident specific. If you zoom out to another fire you will see live feeds for that area if available. This is not an evacuation map, please just use for general reference. NOTE! This is not an evacuation map. If you are told to evacuate, then GO! Do not rely on this map as an excuse to ignore an order to evacuate.
This is a map made with publicly available information and is being updated from government data sources, not the map author alone. There are four key sources of fire information in this map:
New Wildfire Crowdsourced Locations from #FireMappers - This is a feed from a *Prototype* Survey123 Form for reporting new fire locations (e.g., Initial Attack) quickly and in a spatially explicit manner, from a variety of sources (i.e., social media, scanner traffic, flight radar, agency websites, etc.). It is maintained by GISCorps volunteers and is meant to be a way to quickly map new fires. Note - we have added a layer from the British Columbia Wildfire Service just to show fires from north of the border. See bcwildfire.ca for more details.
Active Fires (Nationwide - IRWIN) from computer aided dispatch - This layer provides a near real-time view of the data being shared through the Integrated Reporting of Wildland-Fire Information (IRWIN) service. IRWIN provides data exchange capabilities between participating wildfire systems, including federal, state and local agencies. Data is synchronized across participating organizations to make sure the most current information is available. We are currently working on ways to filter this dataset so it only shows relevant fire locations.
Wildfire Perimeters (NIFC) - The estimated burned area determined by the incident management team. These are generally based on overnight observations from aircraft with infrared sensors (NIROPS), but will usually update each day for large fires before 10:00AM Pacific Time.
Satellite Hot Spot Detection (MODIS and VIIRS) - The approximate locations of heat detected by NASA Satellites which will update several times per day. Click on a point for the age and more information. These points are indicative only, not curated by experts, and subject to horizontal accuracy issues and errors (especially with large hot plumes of smoke). For more information see FIRMS FAQ.
(NAPSG Foundation, 2021)
