Essential information about the AFIS active fire alerting system and its capabilities.
While this application is key for active fire notification, it comes with some limitations. Please review the information below to understand how the system works and the factors that may affect alert accuracy and timing.
The application combines data from various satellite sources to monitor fire incidents. Subscribed users receive notifications when active fires are detected within their specified geofences. The system can identify active fires within a 3-kilometer radius of the designated geofences.
Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite — a satellite sensor that detects thermal anomalies indicative of active fires at a finer spatial resolution.
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer — a satellite sensor providing broad-area fire detection and monitoring capabilities.
Clouds can affect the detection of active fires, potentially leading to missed incidents. Optical sensors may struggle to penetrate thick cloud cover.
Satellite orbits determine the coverage area. Some geofences may be outside the satellite's field of view on certain days.
Satellites don't observe geofences continuously. The timing of satellite overpasses affects data collection. In some cases, a fire may start and burn out before the next overpass.
After satellite overpasses, data must be processed to identify active fires. This processing time can introduce latency in creating alerts and sending them.
The spatial resolution of the VIIRS and MODIS satellite sensors determines the smallest detectable fire size. Very small fires might not be detected due to limitations in spatial resolution.
The time used in this application is in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Please note the offsets needed to convert to your local time.
Multiple active fires can be detected within the same area. Rather than sending notifications for each individual active fire, we spatially cluster them into a single representative fire. The SMS notification includes the location of the representative fire. However, the original fire detections are shown on the AFIS viewer.
Have questions, feedback, or need assistance? Get in touch with the AFIS team.
Contact Us