The document provides an overview of how to use the Firewatch website to access information about fires. Key features include viewing near real-time fire hotspots by location and color, zooming into areas of interest, viewing information about individual hotspots, overlaying hotspots on satellite imagery to view fire activity and smoke plumes, measuring burnt areas, and accessing historical data on previously burnt regions. The site provides tools for emergency services to monitor, manage and mitigate bushfire risks across Australia.

1. An overview of using the Landgate – Firewatch Website
http://firewatch.landgate.wa.gov.au
Getting Started with Firewatch
Version 0.1
April 2012

2. •Start
•Background
•Viewing Firewatch
•Viewing Fire Hotspots
Getting Started with Firewatch
•Zoom to your Area
•View Fire Hotspot Info
Background
•View Satellite Imagery
The Firewatch map service provides location information products for emergency
•Calculate Burnt Areas
services personnel via an online map application to help in the monitoring, management
•Fuel loads
and mitigation of bush fires over Australia.
FireWatch provides access to terabytes of spatial information datasets derived from near
real-time satellite imagery including:
•Fire Hot Spots,
•Satellite Imagery
•Fire Burnt Areas (from 1997),
•Vegetation Greenness images,
•Lightning Strike Locations, and
•Hourly Weather Observations (from the Bureau of Meteorology)
+ more …

3. •Start
•Background
•Viewing Firewatch
•Viewing Fire Hotspots
Getting Started with Firewatch
•Zoom to your Area
•View Fire Hotspot Info
Viewing Firewatch
•View Satellite Imagery
In your internet browser type: http://firewatch.landgate.wa.gov.au
•Calculate Burnt Areas
•Fuel loads
Click on “Firewatch Map Service – Public Access” to run Firewatch
Subscriber Access:
Subscriber access provides the ability to
download the mapping information to your
own computer and other customisations.
This service is primarily designed for
emergency management agency personnel
however open to all for free. If you become
a subscriber, it also helps Landgate to
understand the demographics of who is
using Firewatch.
To become a subscriber please send an
email to: ron.craig@landgate.wa.gov.au

4. •Start
•Background
•Viewing Firewatch
•Viewing Fire Hotspots
Getting Started with Firewatch
•Zoom to your Area
•View Fire Hotspot Info
Viewing Fire Hotspots
•View Satellite Imagery
Your first view of Firewatch shows a map of
•Calculate Burnt Areas
Australia with coloured dots.
•Fuel loads
The coloured dots on the map are fire hotspots.
The colours represent the time when the
satellite mapped the fire hotspot.
The image below explains what the colours
mean in relation to what time the fire
hotspot was mapped. For example red
means that a fire hotspot was mapped
between now and 12 hours ago.
In the example image on the right, there are
Many fires mapped and displayed. This shows
in April, many farmers are burning off stubble
in preparation for the new cropping season.

5. •Start
•Background
•Viewing Firewatch
•Viewing Fire Hotspots
Getting Started with Firewatch
•Zoom to your Area
•View Fire Hotspot Info
Zoom to your area
•View Satellite Imagery
•Calculate Burnt Areas You may wish to zoom in to see if a fire is close
•Fuel loads
to an area of interest.
To zoom in on your areas of interest use the
zoom tool
The zoom tool should already be selected by
default when you first run Firewatch and
ready to use.
Simply draw a rectangle on your area to zoom
in for a closer look.
The position of the fire hotspots will be
displayed with more detailed roads,
town names and other mapping information
to help determine where the fire is.

6. •Start
•Background
•Viewing Firewatch
•Viewing Fire Hotspots
Getting Started with Firewatch
•Zoom to your Area
•View Fire Hotspot Info
View Information about Fire Hotspots
•View Satellite Imagery
•Calculate Burnt Areas To find out when a hotspot was mapped, select
•Fuel loads the Identify tool and click on a fire hotspot.
The results display below the map. You may
need to scroll down to view them.
In this example the fire hotspot was mapped at
125.535 Longitude, -17.185 latitude,
from the NOAA-18 satellite,
at 1:50 am WST (so from night time imagery)
on 20120405 (so 5/04/2012).

7. •Start
•Background
•Viewing Firewatch
•Viewing Fire Hotspots
Getting Started with Firewatch
•Zoom to your Area
•View Fire Hotspot Info View a Satellite Image with Hotspots
•View Satellite Imagery
•Calculate Burnt Areas To view the satellite imagery associated with
•Fuel loads a fire hotspot, click the MODIS Hotspots–daily button.
Select the date of imagery you would like to view.
It defaults to the current day. Press ‘list’ to list the
available satellite imagery passes.
Scroll your curser over each of the images
in the list and you will see a graphic pop-up of
Australia with the satellite imagery overlaid,
showing what part of Australia each image covers.
Dark images are night time thermal images,
coloured images are daytime satellite images.

8. •Start
•Background
•Viewing Firewatch
•Viewing Fire Hotspots
Getting Started with Firewatch
•Zoom to your Area
•View Fire Hotspot Info
View a Satellite Image with Hotspots
•View Satellite Imagery
•Calculate Burnt Areas Click the radio button next to an image that
•Fuel loads covers your area of interest and then press
the ‘Refresh Map’ button.
The satellite image will display over the
map of Australia. You can see where the
edge of the satellite image extents.
Using the zoom tool zoom in to an
area where there is an active fire

9. •Start
•Background
•Viewing Firewatch
•Viewing Fire Hotspots
Getting Started with Firewatch
•Zoom to your Area
•View Fire Hotspot Info
View a Satellite Image with Hotspots
•View Satellite Imagery
•Calculate Burnt Areas Using the zoom tool zoom in to an
•Fuel loads area where there is an active fire.
You can see the coloured fire hotspots showing
the difference in age of the hotsopots mapped.
Red is current (within 12 hours), to oranges
to yellow being cooler / older (48-72 hours old).
In this example you can see how the fire
front has changed over the past 3 days mainly
burning to the west.

10. •Start
•Background
•Viewing Firewatch
•Viewing Fire Hotspots
Getting Started with Firewatch
•Zoom to your Area
•View Fire Hotspot Info
View a Satellite Image with Hotspots
•View Satellite Imagery
•Calculate Burnt Areas Try turning off the hotspots so you can see the
•Fuel loads
image fully.
Click on the ‘Current Fire Information’ button, and
turn off all the hotspots layers. A quick way to do
this is to check the ‘toggle checkboxes’ check
box, to turn the four layers off. This option is
available on most layers within Firewatch.
Then press the ‘Refresh Map’ button and all the
fire hotspots will be turned off, leaving the
satellite image viewable.
The dark patch on the image is a fire scar from
what has been previously burnt.
The white patches on the right hand side show
smoke from the fire. This helps in determining
the wind direction at the time of the satellite
image.
In this example it looks like the wind was blowing
South-south west (SSW)

11. •Start
•Background
•Viewing Firewatch
•Viewing Fire Hotspots
Getting Started with Firewatch
•Zoom to your Area
•View Fire Hotspot Info Calculate the Area of a Fire Burnt Area
•View Satellite Imagery
•Calculate Burnt Areas If you would like to determine the area the fire
•Fuel loads has burnt you can use the ‘Measure Perimeter
and Area with Polygon’ tool
Select this tool and then click on the image
around the darkened area in a clockwise
direction.
When you are back to the start ‘double click’ to
close the area polygon.
The area and perimeter is calculated and
displayed below the map.
You can select what units to display the area in
such as square km’s hectares. In this example
the area is 1,003 sq km.

12. •Start
•Background
•Viewing Firewatch
•Viewing Fire Hotspots
Getting Started with Firewatch
•Zoom to your Area
•View Fire Hotspot Info View previously burnt areas
•View Satellite Imagery
•Calculate Burnt Areas If you would like to determine the area the fire
•Fuel loads has burnt you can use the ‘Measure Perimeter
and Area with Polygon’ tool
Select this tool and then click on the image
around the darkened area in a clockwise
direction.
When you are back to the start ‘double click’ to
close the area polygon.
The area and perimeter is calculated and
displayed below the map.
You can select what units to display the area in
such as square km’s hectares. In this example
the area is 1,003 sq km.