VIIRS Active Fire Detections for South Asia, Near-Real-Time

NASA's FIRMS provides near-real-time active fire and thermal anomaly detections for South Asia from the VIIRS sensor family. Data is updated continuously, typically within 3 hours of satellite acquisition, and is available in SHP, KML, and CSV formats for the last 24 hours, 48 hours, and 7 days. The dataset is sourced from the Suomi-NPP satellite since 2011, NOAA-20 since 2017, and NOAA-21 since 2022.

Use Cases

• Monitor wildfire spread and intensity based on near-real-time thermal anomaly detections.
• Analyze regional fire patterns and seasonality based on VIIRS sensor data covering South Asia.
• Model fire risk and assess environmental impact based on active fire locations over multiple time windows.
• Integrate fire detection data into disaster response systems based on the available SHP, KML, and CSV formats.

Strengths

• Data is updated near-real-time, typically within 3 hours of satellite acquisition.
• Covers a long temporal range with data from Suomi-NPP since 2011, NOAA-20 since 2017, and NOAA-21 since 2022.
• Offers multiple data formats (SHP, KML, CSV) and time windows (24h, 48h, 7d) for flexibility.

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 aboard Suomi-NPP, NOAA-20, and NOAA-21 satellites.

Time Range

Suomi-NPP data since 2011; continuous near-real-time updates.

Freshness

Continuously updated; last metadata update was 2026-05-13 14:52:35.833889.

Geography

South Asia