About

Sentinela tracks wildfires across the whole Iberian Peninsula on a single map, combining official sources from Portugal and from five Spanish regions, NASA satellite detections and burnt areas from the European Copernicus programme. It is a public service, with no ads and no profit motive.

Data sources

Official incidents in Portugal — ANEPC (via fogos.pt)

Incidents in Portugal come from the Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Proteção Civil (ANEPC), Portugal's civil protection authority, through the public fogos.pt API (a VOST Portugal project). They include operational status, resources deployed and location. They cover Portugal only.

Official incidents in Spain — 5 regions

Spain has no national wildfire source: each autonomous region publishes its own data, or none at all. We bring together the five with operational open data: Castilla y León (Junta de Castilla y León), Andalusia (Plan INFOCA — Andalusian Emergency Agency), Catalonia (Bombers de la Generalitat), Castilla-La Mancha (Plan INFOCAM) and the Valencian Community (112 CV). Depending on the source, they include the current situation (active, stabilised or contained), severity level, probable cause and resources deployed.

Most of these sources update in near real time; only the Junta de Castilla y León publishes in bulletins (around twice a day). Across the other regions you will still see satellite detections and burnt areas. We add more regions as they open their data.

Sources: Junta de Castilla y León · Plan INFOCA (Andalusian Emergency Agency) · Bombers de la Generalitat · Plan INFOCAM (JCCM) · 112 Comunitat Valenciana.

Satellite detections — NASA FIRMS

Thermal anomalies across Iberia come from NASA's FIRMS system (VIIRS sensors on the NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 satellites, ~375 m resolution). A detection can take up to ~3 hours to appear after the satellite passes over.

We acknowledge the use of data from NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System), part of NASA's Earth Science Data Systems.

Burnt areas — Copernicus EFFIS

The outlines of the areas already burnt this season, across the whole of Iberia (Portugal and Spain), come from EFFIS — the European Forest Fire Information System, part of the European Union's Copernicus programme. They are traced from satellite imagery and updated around 6 times a day. They show the ground the fire has already covered, not where flames are right now.

Fire-weather risk

Today's fire risk across Iberia comes from the EFFIS Fire Weather Index (FWI), computed from ECMWF weather data. For Portugal we also show the official IPMA Rural Fire Risk (RCM), by municipality, from Low to Maximum. It is a FORECAST of fire-prone weather — it does not show active fires.

Risk sources: EFFIS/ECMWF (Copernicus, European Union) and IPMA (Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere).

Base map

Methodology and update frequency

Official incidents (Portugal): updated every 60 seconds.
Official incidents (Spain): most regions in near real time; Castilla y León in bulletins ~twice a day. We check every 10 minutes.
Satellite detections: updated every 10 minutes.
Burnt areas: updated around 6 times a day (Copernicus EFFIS).
Fire-weather risk: daily forecast (EFFIS/ECMWF and IPMA).
Season statistics: snapshots saved every 15 minutes.

Incident ≠ satellite detection ≠ burnt area

An official incident is a confirmed fire being handled by the authorities — Civil Protection (ANEPC) in Portugal and the regional agencies of the autonomous communities in Spain (filled circles on the map). A satellite detection is just a thermal anomaly seen from space (outlined diamonds) — it could be a fire, but also an authorised burn, an industrial site or a false positive. A burnt area is the ground the fire has already covered this season, drawn as a shaded patch — it tells you about the past, not about active flames. And risk is a weather forecast, not a fire. The layers are never mixed and never added together.