Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) is a free

web mapping Web mapping or an online mapping is the process of using, creating, and distributing maps on the World Wide Web (the Web), usually through the use of Web GIS, Web geographic information systems (Web GIS). A web map or an online map is both served ...

platform offered by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

as part of its ''Earth Science Data Systems'' (ESDS) Program. It displays active fire locations in near real-time overlaid on a map. While created to monitor

wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a ...

s, it has also been used to report on fires due to military conflicts such as the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

and the Tigray war.

Specifications

Satellites

The data is collected via satellites in

sun-synchronous orbit A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), also called a heliosynchronous orbit, is a nearly polar orbit around a planet, in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time. More technically, it is ...

, making each satellite pass over the same location on Earth on the same time every day. Each satellite crosses the equator from North to South twelve times a day thus also from South to North twelve times a day. File:Orbit path - Aqua ascending - day.png, Aqua's ascending orbital path as of 2021 File:Orbit path - Aqua descending - night.png, Aqua's descending orbital path as of 2021 File:Orbit path - NOAA-20 descending - night.png,

NOAA-20 NOAA-20, designated JPSS-1 prior to launch, is the first of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's latest generation of U.S. polar-orbiting, non-geosynchronous, environmental satellites called the Joint Polar Sate ...

's descending orbital path

Instruments

The data is collected via

MODIS The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is a satellite-based sensor used for earth and climate measurements. There are two MODIS sensors in Earth orbit: one on board the Terra (EOS AM) satellite, launched by NASA in 19 ...

(on board

Terra Terra may often refer to: * Terra (mythology), primeval Roman goddess * An alternate name for planet Earth, as well as the Latin name for the planet Terra may also refer to: Geography Astronomy * Terra (satellite), a multi-national NASA scient ...

and Aqua) and VIIRS (on board

Suomi NPP The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP), previously known as the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) and NPP-Bridge, is a weather satellite operated by the United State ...

, NOAA-20 and

NOAA-21 NOAA-21, designated JPSS-2 prior to launch, is the second satellite in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s latest series of U.S. polar-orbiting, non-geosynchronous, environmental satellites, known as the Joint Polar Satel ...

) satellite instruments. The

spatial resolution In physics and geosciences, the term spatial resolution refers to distance between independent measurements, or the physical dimension that represents a pixel of the image. While in some instruments, like cameras and telescopes, spatial resoluti ...

of the MODIS instrument is 1 km × 1 km and 375 m × 375 m for VIIRS. This sets a lower limit on how accurately fires can be placed and whether a detection stems from a single larger or multiple smaller fires.

Website

The data collected by FIRMS are presented as a free web mapping service, with the active fire locations if any overlaid on a map. The detections are displayed on top of a static background layer and each visualized detection is clickable to display its data, such as detection time, coordinates, satellite and instrument. The default static background layer consists of higher resolution satellite imagery with terrain details called ''Blue Marble'' in reference to

The Blue Marble ''The Blue Marble'' is a photograph of Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by either Ronald Evans (astronaut), Ron Evans or Harrison Schmitt aboard the Apollo 17 spacecraft on its way to the Moon. Viewed from around from Earth's surface, a crop ...

. File:NASA FIRMS 2024-04-16 Børsen terra.png, The 2024 Børsen fire detected at 11:48 local time by

on its descending pass, overlaid in orange File:NASA FIRMS 2024-10-19 Greenwich lines.png, The

Greenwich Meridian The Greenwich meridian is a prime meridian, a geographical reference line that passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in London, England. From 1884 to 1974, the Greenwich meridian was the international standard prime meridian, ...

overlaid with latitude-longitude lines File:NASA FIRMS 2024-10-19 Virgo distance.png, The FIRMS measurement tool calculates the length of a user defined sequence of connected

line segments In geometry, a line segment is a part of a straight line that is bounded by two distinct endpoints (its extreme points), and contains every point on the line that is between its endpoints. It is a special case of an '' arc'', with zero curvatu ...

, here the

isosceles right triangle A special right triangle is a right triangle with some regular feature that makes calculations on the triangle easier, or for which simple formulas exist. For example, a right triangle may have angles that form simple relationships, such as 45°� ...

of the

Virgo interferometer The Virgo interferometer is a large-scale scientific instrument near Pisa, Italy, for detecting gravitational waves. The detector is a Michelson interferometer, which can detect the minuscule length variations in its two arms induced by the p ...

with sides 3 km + 3 km + 3 km ≈ 10.24 km File:NASA FIRMS 2024-09-18 Toropets area.png, The FIRMS measurement tool calculates the area of a user defined

polygon In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure made up of line segments connected to form a closed polygonal chain. The segments of a closed polygonal chain are called its '' edges'' or ''sides''. The points where two edges meet are the polygon ...

, here the

Toropets depot explosions Toropets () is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, town and the administrative center of Toropetsky District in Tver Oblast, Russia, located where the Toropa River enters Lake Solomennoye. Population: History In 1074, when the town was ...

File:NASA FIRMS 2024-10-19 Alxa League zero.png, The FIRMS measurement tool calculates the area of a self-intersecting polygon such that e.g. a crossed square has zero area

Development

FIRMS was developed by the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

in 2007 with NASA funds and from 2010 to 2012 a version of it was run by the UN's

FAO The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; . (FAO) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition ...

. On 31 January 2023 NASA entered into a ''Space Act'' agreement with

GIS A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database; however, this is not ...

software company

Esri Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., doing business as Esri (), is an American Multinational corporation, multinational geographic information system (GIS) software company headquartered in Redlands, California. It is best known for ...

. The purpose of the agreement is to further improve global access to NASA's geospatial data via Esri's

ArcGIS ArcGIS is a family of client, server and online geographic information system (GIS) software developed and maintained by Esri. ArcGIS was first released in 1982 as ARC/INFO, a command line-based GIS. ARC/INFO was later merged into ArcGIS De ...

software and via

Open Geospatial Consortium The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international voluntary consensus standards organization that develops and maintains international standards for geospatial content and location-based services, sensor web, Internet of Things, Geographi ...

data-formats.

References

External links

* {{website-stub NASA Internet properties established in 2021 Emergency management Web mapping