A fire tracking website for rural northern AustraliansNorth Australian Fire Information (NAFI)www.firenorth.org.au

• Locate burning fires in close to real time

• See regularly updated maps of burnt country

• View fire weather conditions, download fire data, and much more

Advanced features

You can quickly see a fire history for your property or area of interest that shows fire frequencies or time since last burnt.

Go to Map Layers

Create your own custom maps and email fire alerts

Use NAFI data with hand-held GPS units Use NAFI to help with fire planning for your property

You can create a NAFI map of your property or area and store it in the left hand menu of the site so you re-visit the map with one click.

Go to Fire Map Regions and then “My Areas”

When creating these maps you can also make sure you are notified by email if a hotspot is detected inside your area.

Go to Fire Email Alerts

View NAFI data in Google Earth and other viewers

You can view NAFI data such as the latest hotspots, fire scars and fire histories in other map viewers such as Google Earth or ArcGIS

Go to Google Earth, WMS

You can now work with the NAFI data using your hand-held GPS unit:

• Download NAFI maps of fire scars, fire histories etc. as a background for your GPS unit. Use the button above the map.

• Download hand-drawn fire lines from the NAFI site to your GPS unit. Use the button above the map.

• Upload fire lines generated by the GPS unit for viewing on NAFI.

Go to Upload Data

Contacts:Cape York Sustainable Futures 4/275 McCormack Street Cairns 4870 Ph: (07) 4053 2856 Fax: (07) 4053 2942 Email: info@cysf.com.au

Charles Darwin UniversityNT 0909 Ph: (08) 8946 6285 Fax: (08) 8946 7107 Email: peter.jacklyn@cdu.edu.au

You can also highlight a selected area and generate simple pdf reports for the area that lists areas burnt by fire, areas subject to different frequencies of burning etc.

Go to Fire Reports

Use NAFI to help predict fire spread You can quickly view maps of current fire scars together with fire scars from the last two years to get an idea of the grassy fuels available for fire to spread.

Click on the “3yr scars” button at the top left of the NAFI site

Click this symbol, draw a rectangle, and zoom in for a close-up

Click this symbol, draw a rectangle, and zoom out for a broad view

Click this symbol, and move the map across the screen

What’s on the NAFI site? How to use the NAFI site

The North Australian Fire Information website (NAFI) uses satellite information and other data from Landgate, Geoscience Australia, Cape York Sustainable Futures and Bushfires NT to produce maps of burning fires (hotspots) and burnt country (fire scars) across northern Australia.

In the east, the hotspot and fire-scar maps extend south to the NSW border. In the west, the hotspot maps extend south to Geraldton and the fire-scar maps extend south to Port Headland.

Hotspots are updated every few hours in clear weather and fire scars are updated several times each month to build a fire history for a location.

The site is most useful for landscape-scale fire management rather than for rapid emergency response and is a valuable tool for land managers in developing property fire management plans.

Feedback on the site is greatly appreciated so we can continue to improve the service and provide a practical tool for people who need to manage fires.

Getting startedSelect from pre-set maps in the list at the upper left. The list expands to reveal sub-maps as you click on it. Clicking the little arrows allows you to go to sub-maps directly.

Move around the mapGo to the tool bar at the bottom of the map and:

You can use the ‘i’ buttons to query other map features — like fire scars but first you need to make these layers ‘active’ by clicking on the “inf” button next to the map layer in the layer list.

You can measure distances and areas (e.g. of fire scars) by using the tool on the right of the map tool bar. Trace out the line or boundary you want to measure with mouse clicks, and then click back onto the tool.

Downloading dataThe NAFI site now has an extensive range of fire related data available for download as either images or shapefiles:

• 250m and 1km fire history datasets for all of north Australia

• 250m fire scar data from 2004 for all of north Australia and for your selected area

• Hotspots for your selected map area

Go to Download Data

Printing your mapsClicking on the icon in the NAFI tool bar (below the map) will print out the map as a pdf.

Getting help on how to use the siteClick on the small “more info” links next to the menu item you want help on:

Fire scarsAreas of burnt country are shown as coloured

patches – with a different colour for the month in which they

were detected

HotspotsIndividual fires that have been burning

over the last week are shown as coloured

spotsExtent of NAFI coverageBrisbane

Published August 2011

Or: click on Help & Useful Links in the left-hand menu for more detailed help on some areas of the site.

Changing the background and other map layersYou can quickly select from a standard map, a 3 year fire history or recent automated fire scar maps by clicking on the buttons at the top of the “Fire Map Regions” menu.

Or: you can select the “Map Layers” area of the left hand menu which will bring up the list of map layers.

With the drop-down menu at the top you can select different line map or topo map backgrounds for your hotspots and fire scars.

In the main layers list, click on the ‘Show’ tick-boxes to see other map layers, such as fire histories, older fire scars and hotspots and weather information.

Reviewing maps created in your visitWhen you use the NAFI site you may create many maps as you zoom in or out and drag maps across the screen. Clicking on History in the left hand menu displays all these maps you create in a visit as clickable links – allowing you to instantly go back to any previous map.

Getting information on fires and fire scarsClick on the button in the tool bar at the bottom of the map and then click on a hotspot to see the time, date and satellite that detected the fire.

Use the or buttons to draw a rectangles or other shapes around hotspot groups and see details on all of them.

Or: click this map in the broad area you want to go to

Or: search for a location using the Go To Location tool in the left hand menu