Southern Africa VIIRS Active Fire Detections from NASA FIRMS
Updated 23d ago
27filesSHP
Available on 1 platform
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Description
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
License is us-pd (U.S. Public Domain). Files are hosted externally on NASA servers.