Improvements to FIRMS application data processing, visualization and user experience

The Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) is the part of NASA's Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE) that provides near real-time active fire data from MODIS and VIIRS to meet the needs of firefighters, scientists and users interested in monitoring fires. Over the last 18 months FIRMS has undergone a major upgrade to improve usability, mapping capabilities, and performance. Enhancements include: distributed dynamic map tile generation, improved web-browser caching, database query optimizations, and a complete redesign of the user interface (UI). The modifications resulted in a 10-fold increase in performance over the previous version and a significantly greater end-user experience. The system now delivers robust email alerts and data download solutions, and a more flexible interactive map. FIRMS online map enables users to: modify the color of fire pixels by instrument and by day or night time fires, view a range of Fire Radiative Power (FRP) values and confidence values, and view current and historic fires as points or grids which highlight fire densities. The server-side processes now run under the LANCE component of the MODIS Adaptive Processing System. In future this system could be expanded to support other near-real time applications.

For more information visit: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov