DEA Hotspots

Vector product

Version:: 1.0.0
Type:: Data service, Vector
Coverage:: 27 Aug 2002 to Present
Data updates:: Every 10 minutes, Ongoing

Overview

Important

DEA Hotspots is not to be used for safety of life decisions.

About

Digital Earth Australia (DEA) Hotspots is a national bushfire monitoring system that uses satellite sensors to detect areas producing high levels of infrared radiation — called Hotspots — to allow users to identify potential fire locations with a possible threat to communities and property.

Access the data

For help accessing the data, see the Access tab.

See it on a map

DEA Maps

DEA Hotspots Secure Access

Data sources

Access the data on AWS

Data sources

Web Mapping Service (WMS)

Web services

Web Feature Service (WFS)

Web services

KML (last 3 days)

Web services

GeoJSON (last 3 days)

Web services

Product Description and documents

Read the documents

Key specifications

For more specifications, see the Specifications tab.

Technical name	Digital Earth Australia Hotspots
Layers	Single layer of data (Hotspot). View attribute fields.
Catalogue ID	111881
Currency	See currency and the latest update date
Tags	bushfires, emergency_management, satellite_imagery
Licence	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

Cite this product

Data citation

Geoscience Australia, 2020. Digital Earth Australia Hotspots dataset. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/111881

Description

Product Description and documents

Read the Product Description (PDF) for the technical specifications and layers.

Read the documents

Background

Bushfires are a natural part of the Australian landscape. Many of our native flora and fauna have adapted to the specific fire regimes of the regions in which they live.

It is important we are able to accurately map and monitor fires on a near real-time basis. This information allows emergency services to control bushfires and develop risk assessments and disaster relief plans.

What this product offers

Digital Earth Australia (DEA) Hotspots is a national bushfire monitoring system that provides timely information about hotspots to emergency service managers and critical infrastructure providers across Australia. Updated with new information every 10 minutes, the mapping system uses satellite sensors to detect areas producing high levels of infrared radiation (called Hotspots) to allow users to identify potential fire locations with a possible risk to communities and property.

DEA Hotspots is not published in real time and should not be used for safety of life decisions.

There are two versions of the DEA Hotspots system:

DEA Hotspots public version_number: https://hotspots.dea.ga.gov.au/
- Available for anyone to access and use
DEA Hotspots secure users’ version_number: https://hotspots.dea.ga.gov.au/login
- Available for emergency managers and associated organisations
- Provides priority access to the system during periods of high demand
- Includes additional sources of Hotspot information
- To apply for access, email earth.observation@ga.gov.au

Applications

Hotspots can indicate possible active fires in some circumstances. Taken as an ensemble, Hotspots provide an overview of thermal activity in Australia and capture the pattern of possible fires across the Australian continent over time.

This application allows you to visualise, search and download current and historic Hotspot data for any location Australia-wide.

You can also overlay satellite passes, topography, burnt areas, and other imagery sources such as Sentinel 2A & 2B Near Real-Time products.

The system can be used by:

emergency services
- Emergency management agencies use Hotspots as one of many operational data feeds to inform their broad situational awareness of, and at times tactical response to, fires.
climate change researchers
the media
policy makers
the broader public

Technical information

Important notes about Hotspots

Each Hotspot is represented by a spot on the map, derived from (a growing number of) satellite-born instruments that detect light in the thermal wavelengths.
Hotspots can indicate possible active fires in some circumstances. Taken as an ensemble, Hotspots provide an overview of thermal activity in Australia and capture the pattern of possible fires across the Australian continent overtime.
Emergency management agencies use Hotspots as one of many operational data feeds to inform their broad situational awareness of, and at times tactical response to, fires.
DEA Hotspots should not be used for safety of life decisions. For local updates and alerts, please refer to your state emergency or fire service.
Hotspots are not presented in real-time and not designed to be used in isolation of other data sources. It is not accurate enough to be relied upon for time-critical detection and location of fires.
The colour of the spot represents the time the Hotspot was last observed by a passing satellite (e.g., 0-2 hours). The colour does not indicate severity.
The size of the Hotspots does not indicate the size of the fire.
- If you zoom in on the map you will notice that the size of the Hotspot dot will change.
The Hotspot location on any map (no matter how detailed) is only accurate to ± 375 m at best (VIIRS).

Hotspot data generation

At best, hotspots information is 17 minutes old (this is how long it takes to download and process data into hotspots after each satellite pass).

The Himawari-9 satellite is a geostationary satellite, which covers Australia at all times, and provides updates every 10 minutes, however the information is not published in real time.
All other satellites pass over a given area up to 4 times a day, and each pass covers only a part of Australia, which means some fires are not detected because the satellite was not looking over that area at the appropriate time.

Thermal infrared sensors on-board the satellites can detect areas with unusually high temperatures. We call these areas Hotspots.

Satellites and sensors

DEA Hotspot sources include the:

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Aqua polar orbiting satellite.
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) nighttime imagery from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA-19) polar orbiting satellite.
Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi National Polar orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, NOAA-20, and NOAA-21 polar orbiting satellites.
Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) sensor operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) on the Himawari-9 geostationary satellite.

Quality

Accuracy

Quality assurance

False positives (showing a Hotspot without an underlying cause) are possible.
False negatives (failing to show a Hotspot, despite a heated land surface, fire, etc.) are possible.
Hotspots are potential bushfires, but could also indicate other phenomena, such as gas fires, heavy industry, furnaces, smoke plumes, jet contrails and hot rocks.
Not all fires will be detected as Hotspots.
The Hotspot location on any map (no matter how detailed) is only accurate to ± 375 m at best (VIIRS).
Hotspots are not presented in real-time and not designed to be used in isolation of other data sources. It is not accurate enough to be relied upon for time-critical detection and location of fires.
Geostationary satellite derived products algorithms may be optimised for day or night conditions. For algorithms such as BRIGHT that provide hotspots every 10 minutes, 24 hours per day, temporal windows approximately +/- 1 hour of sunset and sunrise are considered unreliable periods.
No Hotspots are produced if satellite data is not received (e.g. for AHI, 0240 and 1440 UTC times are not received).
Hotspots should not be used for safety of life decisions. For local updates and alerts, please refer to your state emergency or fire service.
Depending on the sensor, generally, a flaming or smouldering fire would need to be at least 1,000 m2 to be recognised as a Hotspot. Under exceptional (and rare) conditions (no cloud, smoke, wind etc), a flaming fire at 50m2 may be detected. However, fires are often smaller than the size of the satellite pixel.

Missing Hotspots

Hotspots may be obscured or missing from the map due to the following reasons:

Polar Orbiting satellites are not designed to provide live updates on fire fronts, as they only look over the fire ground 4-7 times per day.
Optical satellites cannot see though clouds, heavy smoke or tree canopy.
Fires may be missed if they are relatively small or do not cover a spatial footprint large enough to be detected by the sensors (e.g. the MODIS footprint is 1km2).
Cool fires are not likely to be detected.
Sensors can be inoperable for extended periods of time, disrupting the detection of Hotspots.
The fire may have been burning during a time when no satellite was looking over the fire ground.

Known Issues

Specifications ✨

Layers

Vector products contain one or more distinct layers of data, and each layer can contain multiple attribute fields.

Hotspot

The attributes and metadata included with each Hotspot vary according to the access mechanism used to interact with the Hotspot information. E.g., the Hotspots portal contains a subset of these attributes, while the Geoscience Australia Historic Hotspot database (the Historic database) contains the full metadata record for each Hotspot.

	Type	Units	Description
ID	-	-	Numeric ID assigned to the Hotspot.
Satellite	-	-	Name of the satellite platform that is carrying the sensor used to acquire the satellite data for hotspots calculation (e.g., Aqua, Suomi NPP, NOAA-20, NOAA-21).
Satellite_nssdc_id	-	-	National Space Science Data Centre (NSSDC) unique satellite number. Learn more
Satellite_operating_agency	-	-	Name of the agency providing the satellite data (e.g., NASA).
Sensor	-	-	Name of the sensor used to detect the Hotspot (e.g., MODIS, VIIRS, AVHRR, AHI).
Orbit	-	-	The orbit number is determined using the information provided in the NORAD Two Line Element (TLE) file(s). The TLE file provides reference information foran “epoch” orbit that allows the current orbit to be calculated using the acquisition information. A value of -1 indicates the orbit is not reported.
Start_dt	-	-	Start date and time (in UTC) of the satellite pass acquisition.
Stop_dt	-	-	Stop date and time (in UTC) of the satellite pass acquisition. Note that Himawari-9, NOAA-20, and Suomi NPP do not have Stop_dt information.
Filename	-	-	File name that the Hotspot is contained in and uses the following format: satellite_dateUTC_Hotspot.txt
Process_dt	-	-	Date and time (in UTC) that the Hotspot was processed (file creation time).
Process_algorithm	-	-	The name of the algorithm used to producethe Hotspot (e.g., MOD14, AFIMG, BRIGHT AHI).
Process_algorithm_version	-	-	Algorithm version number used to produce the Hotspot.
Product	-	-	Name of the product within the database (e.g., LANDGATE_AHI, MOD14).
Load_dt	-	-	Date and time (in UTC) that the Hotspot was loaded into the database.
Latitude	-	Signed decimal degrees	Hotspot latitude is based on WGS84 (º). (For more information, see the Product Description.)
Longitude	-	Signed decimal degrees	Hotspot longitude is based on WGS84 (º). (For more information, see the Product Description.)
Temperature	-	Degrees Kelvin	To detect the presence of a Hotspot, a set of detection criteria has been developed. (For more information, see the Product Description.)
Power²	-	Megawatt (MW)	(For more information, see the Product Description.)
Confidence	-	None (scalar value)	The Confidence attribute is intended to help users to gauge the quality of individual fire pixels within the fire mask. GA displays and provides all Hotspots, regardless of confidence. Users can choose to filter on the confidence attribute, according to their use case. (For more information, see the Product Description.)
Datetime	-	-	Time of acquisition for the data in which the Hotspot was detected (UTC). This is determined based on the start and end time of the acquisition. For the current satellites the level of accuracy should be of the order of 5 mins. (For more information, see the Product Description.)
Australian_state	-	-	State that the Hotspot was captured in (e.g., NSW, ACT, WA, NT, VIC, TAS, QLD, SA).
Hours_since_hotspot	-	-	Hours since hotspot detection – only provided with web service access, and only correct at time of access.
Accuracy	-	-	Accuracy of the Hotspot detection based on the resolution of the satellite used.

For more information on these layers, see the Product Description.

Product information

This metadata provides general information about the product.

Short name	DEA Hotspots	The name that is commonly used to refer to the product.
Technical name	Digital Earth Australia Hotspots	The full technical name that refers to the product and its specific provider, sensors, and collection.
Version	1.0.0	The version number of the product.
Lineage type	Data service	Our standard lineage types are ‘Baseline’ and ‘Derivative’.
Spatial type	Vector	Vector data consists of spatial polygons, lines, and points.
Temporal coverage	27 Aug 2002 to Present	The time span for which data is available.
Coordinate Reference System (CRS)	WGS 84 (EPSG:4326)	The method of mapping spatial data to the Earth’s surface.
Update frequency	Every 10 minutes	The expected frequency of data updates. Also called ‘Temporal resolution’.
Update activity	Ongoing	The activity status of data updates.
Currency	See the Currency Report	Currency is a measure based on data publishing and update frequency.
Latest update date	Currency Report	See Table A of the report.
Catalogue ID	111881	The Data and Publications catalogue (eCat) ID.
Licence	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence	See the Credits tab.

Product categorisation

This metadata describes how the product relates to other DEA products.

Tags

bushfires, emergency_management, satellite_imagery

Access

Access the data

DEA Maps	See it on a map	Learn how to use DEA Maps.
Data sources	DEA Hotspots Secure Access Access the data on AWS	Learn how to access the data via AWS.
Web services	Web Mapping Service (WMS) Web Feature Service (WFS) KML (last 3 days) GeoJSON (last 3 days)	Learn how to use DEA’s web services.
Read the documents	Product Description and documents	Read the Product Description (PDF) for the technical specifications and layers.

Use constraints

DEA Hotspots is not to be used for safety of life decisions.

The information displayed on DEA Hotspots (the “Service”) is for general informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide any commercial, financial, or legal advice.

Please see the Geoscience Australia website for the full disclaimer notice.

History

Version history

No previous versions are available.

Changelog

19 Dec 2024: NOAA-21-derived DEA Hotspots are now available

Following our communication in November regarding changes to the Hotspots service, we are pleased to advise that Hotspots derived from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor onboard NOAA-21 are now available. NOAA-21 currently passes over Australia at approximately 3pm and 2am Australian Eastern Standard Time, increasing the density and reliability of the afternoon and nighttime observations.

In the Hotspots application, the NOAA-21 feed is off by default. You can include either the VIIRS ‘AFIMG NOAA-21’, or ‘AFMOD NOAA-21’ Hotspots algorithms as additional layers in the Hotspots map interface by selecting these layers from the VIIRS menu in the legend.

View the Tech Alert

18 Nov 2024: DEA Hotspots — Enhancing Bushfire Monitoring with New Satellite Data

We are writing to keep you informed of changes that are occurring to the DEA Hotspots service. While faced with the loss of the MODIS Terra for our morning observations, we can continue to use available satellites to bolster the density and reliability of our afternoon observations. Data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor onboard NOAA-21 will be available in DEA Hotspots by early December 2024. Once NOAA-21 data is available, a tech alert will be issued to users.

View the Tech Alert

Credits

License and copyright

Released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.