Southern Africa VIIRS Active Fire Detections from NASA FIRMS

NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System provides near-real-time active fire detections for Southern Africa from the VIIRS sensor family. The data is updated continuously, typically within 3 hours of satellite overpass, 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, NOAA-20, and NOAA-21 satellites.

Use Cases

• Monitor wildfire spread and intensity based on near-real-time thermal anomaly detections.
• Analyze spatio-temporal fire patterns in Southern Africa based on satellite overpass data.
• Model fire risk and land-use impact based on active fire location and frequency.

Strengths

• Near-real-time updates, typically within 3 hours of satellite acquisition.
• Covers Southern Africa with data from multiple VIIRS satellites since 2011.
• Available in multiple geospatial formats (SHP, KML, CSV) for different time windows.

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

Continuous coverage since 2011, with data available for the last 24h, 48h, and 7d.

Freshness

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

Geography

Southern Africa