Home Planet at Your Fingertips
Wildfires Global
Summary
We developed a website that intends to spread more information about wildfires across the world, while also allowing them to see the various satellite images produced by NASA from any chosen date within the last 5 years. Our ultimate goal was to use the labeled wildfire data provided by NASA in order to allow users to select a location on the map and retrieve information such as the number of wildfires located in the region, the CO2 emission levels, and the distance of the closest detected fire. Unfortunately, we were not able to accomplish our final goal of analyzing wildfire data due to a shortage of time.
How We Addressed This Challenge
We developed a website that allows user to see satellite data such as Warm/Cold zones, Cloud Paths, Light Pollution and active wildfire locations around the world. This is important in order to help people visualize satellite data in a more user friendly way. Our main purpose was analyze all this data (specifically wildfires) and output meaningful results about the risks and concerns within the specified location. Users can select a date and filters to apply to the map in order to visualize the satellite data produced on that day, and also have the option of clicking the "Show Active Wildfires" button which receives real time data from NASA's wildfire web mapping services and plots the points on the map. This helps users see areas of wildfire concerns globally, while also analyzing the risk of wildfires in their respective location. If we were successful in extracting and analyzing the data, users would be able to see levels of C02 at the current time (or any time if chosen) in any chosen location. They would also be able to see the number of potential wildfires within the area, and get the exact location of the closest fire. This is useful information for anyone living in a Wildfire hotspot worldwide, so that they can better analyze their current situation.
How We Developed This Project
We were inspire to choose this challenge as there has been MANY wildfires within the past couple years, and with climate change as a serious threat worldwide, it is important for the world to be able to visualize true data to better understand the issue and its potential risks. We used GitHub to write all our source code for this project. We worked with html, css to create the general appearance of the website, and javascript to add functionality. We also used libraries/plugins such as JQuery (to extract data), Bootstrap (to add UI features) , Leaflet (to manage our map), and Leaflet.wms (to manage the real time wild-fire data). Do to it being everyones the first time using Javascript, we were unable to extract the csv data in a timely manner. Also, one issue with our project is that the FIRMS WMS allows only 300 refreshes per minute, which limits the time we are allowed to view the wildfire data.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We successfully use the NASA GIBS API to add our multiple satellite layers such as Warm/Cold zones, Light pollution, and Cloud paths. We used NASA FIRMS Web Mapping Services to retrieve our live wildfire data, with a constant refresh rate.
Project Demo
https://spysly.github.io/nasa-spaceapp/
Very straightforward, no slideshow is needed. Simply click on the link, and click our "Try Map" button to view our satellite and fire filters.
Please Note: There are some bugs with the date selector. You must physically select all the dates, then select the filter otherwise there may be a potential loading issue.
The wildfire data is realtime, therefore does not get affected by date change.
Project Code
Data & Resources
https://wiki.earthdata.nasa.gov/display/GIBS/GIBS+API+for+Developers
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2020-10-04..2020-10-05;@0.0,0.0,3z