VIIRS Active Fire Detections for Australia and New Zealand

Near-real-time active fire and thermal anomaly detections from NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) covering Australia and New Zealand. The data is derived from the VIIRS sensor family and is continuously updated, typically within 3 hours of satellite acquisition. Files are available in SHP, KML, and CSV formats for the last 24 hours, 48 hours, and 7 days.

Use Cases

• Monitor wildfire spread and intensity based on near-real-time thermal anomaly data.
• Analyze historical fire patterns over a 7-day window based on the provided time-series data.
• Integrate fire detection points into geographic information systems based on the SHP and KML formats.
• Model fire risk and validate fire spread simulations based on satellite-derived active fire locations.

Strengths

• Data is updated near-real-time, typically within 3 hours of satellite acquisition.
• Provides multiple temporal windows (last 24h, 48h, 7d) for analysis.
• Offers data in three standard geospatial formats: SHP, KML, and CSV.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS)

Collection Method

Derived from the VIIRS sensor family (Suomi-NPP, NOAA-20, NOAA-21).

Time Range

Data available for last 24h, 48h, and 7d; sensor data spans from 2011 (Suomi-NPP) to present.

Freshness

Continuously updated; last metadata update was 2026-05-13.

Geography

Australia and New Zealand.