The 2019/2020 bushfire season was one of the most devasting to occur in Australia. Between October 2019 and February 2020, almost 13 million hectares of land were burned in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. The last fires were extinguished in February 2020, however the damage was extensive across the country.

Flora and fauna

Across the entire country, the largest area of land burned was conservation land. The Blue Mountains and the Gondwana world heritage sites suffered widespread damage. Many threatened species were affected by the bush fires. Furthermore, an estimated 1.5 billion wildlife animals, who resided in habitats destroyed by the fires, were killed.

Property damage

As well as the loss of wildlife, the properties of many Australians were destroyed. In New South Wales alone, thousands of buildings were destroyed or damaged. Insurance claims directly in relation to bushfires across the entire country were valued at 1.9 billion Australian dollars as of January 2020. The full financial impact from these fires is yet to bet determined.

The majority of bushfires in Australia were started either accidentally or deliberately by humans as of November 2019, at a 35 percent and 13 percent share of total bushfire ignitions respectively. Additionally, suspicious fires made up a 37 percent share of the total bushfire ignitions.

Abstract The National Bushfire Historical Extents Dataset (version 3.0) represents the aggregation of jurisdictional supplied burnt areas polygons (except Northern Territory) that date from the late 1800's through to 2024. The burnt areas represent curated jurisdictional owned polygons of both bushfires and prescribed (planned) burns. This dataset was produced under Work Stream 1C - Activity 3 of the National Bushfire Intelligence Capability; a collaborative partnership between the Australian Climate Services, CSIRO (NBIC), Geoscience Australia (GA), and the Emergency Management Spatial Information Network (EMSINA). Under agreement this Project (Activity 3) will release a nationally consistent, harmonised and standardised historical bushfire extent dataset derived from the authoritative state and territory agencies. The information released within this dataset is reflective of the data supplied by participating authoritative agencies. It may, or may not, represent all fire history within that jurisdiction. Apart from small updates to this dataset up until 30 June 2025 there are no plans for another major update to this Product. Currency Date modified: November 2024 Next modification date: June 2025 Data Extent Spatial extent North: -9° South: -44° East: 154° West: 112° Temporal extent 30 December 1899 to 29 August 2024 Source information Catalog entry: Bushfire Boundaries – Historical Lineage Statement Date created: 24 October 2024 Version 3 of this dataset extends upon the previous versions of this dataset built and released under the Australia Research Data Commons Project in early 2023 and National Bushfire Intelligence Capability in October 2023. This dataset represents an updated aggregation of each jurisdiction (except the Northern Territo ry) fire history data to include information from the 2023-24 bushfire season. Sources of State and Territory Data are: - Australian Capital Territory Parks and Conservation - New South Wales Parks and Wildlife Service - New South Wales Rural Fire Service - Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service - South Australia Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources - Tasmania Department of Natural Resources and Environment - Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action - Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions

Please note that some of the above are responsible for the collection and distribution of multiple Agencies data. These agencies are identified at the attribute level.

Northern Territory Data: The Northern Territory Government continue to progress in the development of their Bushfire Extent capabilities. Work is well underway with the relevant agency’s to be able to incorporate NT Government approved Historical Bushfire Extent data in the near future. Product standardisation: The data provided by each jurisdiction is standardised and harmonised. This process maps the existing state/territory attributes to the National Data Schema that was agreed to and endorsed by the participating state agencies and the Australian Fire and Emergency Services Authorities Council. The Digital Atlas of Australia data team published an optimised Bushfire Historic Extents dataset designed to perform efficiently in either a desktop application or a web service. Data dictionary All layers

Attribute name Description

fire_id ID attached to fire (e.g. incident ID, Event ID, Burn ID).

fire_name Incident name. If available.

fire_type Binary variable to describe whether a fire was a bushfire or prescribed burn.

ignition_date The date of the ignition of a fire event. Date and time are local time zone from the State where the fire is located and stored as a string.

capture_date The date of the incident boundary was captured or updated. Date and time are local time zone from the Jurisdiction where the fire is located and stored as a string.

extinguish_date The date a fire is declared safe (contained and under control). If available.

capt_method Categorical variable to describe the source of data used for defining the spatial extent of the fire.

area_ha Burnt area in Hectares. Currently calculated field so that all areas calculations are done in the same map projection. Jurisdiction supply area in appropriate projection to match state incident reporting system.

perim_km Burnt perimeter in Kilometres. Calculated field so that all areas calculations are done in the same map projection. Jurisdiction preference is that supplied perimeter calculations are used for consistency with jurisdictional reporting.

state State custodian of the data. NOTE: Currently some states use and have in their feeds cross border data

agency Agency that is responsible for the incident

Fire Type definitions

Data Source Category Description

Bushfire Unplanned vegetation fire. A generic term which includes grass fires, forest fires and scrub fires both with and without a suppression objective. Also known as wildfire, accident, arson, lightning.

Prescribed Burn The controlled application of fire under specified environmental conditions to a predetermined area and at the time, intensity, and rate of spread required to attain planned resource management objectives. Also known as planned burning, fuel reduction, traditional owner, ecological, hazard reduction

Unknown Fire type is undetermined.

Ignition Cause definitions

Data Source Category Description

Accidental Fires that are not the result of a deliberate (intentional) act.

Natural Fires that ignite without human intervention.

Incendiary Fires result from deliberate acts, intentional actions, or circumstances for the fire to occur in areas where it should not have occurred.

Undetermined Fires that have not yet been investigated, under investigation or fires that have been investigated and the cause is not proven to an acceptable level of certainty.

Capture Method definitions

Data Source Category Description

Aerial photography Derived from Aerial photography including manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods.

Linescanner Mapped against airborne sensor systems.

Ground intelligence Mud map from ground observation.

Ground intelligence GPS Fire boundary derived from ground (e.g. GPS tracker, Avenza).

Air intelligence Mud map from air observation.

Air intelligence GPS Fire boundary derived from air (e.g. helicopter, spotter).

Himawari Derived from geostationary satellite Himawari and includes manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 2 kilometres).

NOAA AVHRR Derived from Low Resolution - NOAA AVHRR satellite including manual interpretation, partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 1 kilometres).

MODIS Derived from Low Resolution - MODIS satellite imagery including manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 250 metres).

VIIRS Derived from Low Resolution - VIIRS satellite imagery including manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 375 metres).

Landsat Derived from Medium Resolution - Landsat satellite imagery including manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 30 metres).

Sentinel Derived from Medium Resolution - Sentinel satellite imagery including manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 10 - 20 metres).

Multiple Derived from multiple sources e.g. combination of ground intel and linescanner. For detailed information contact agency or state responsible.

Unknown Data Source is unknown.

Contact Geoscience Australia, clientservices@ga.gov.au

As of Januray 2020, ** people had lost their lives in New South Wales due to the 2019/2020 Australian bushfire season. A total of ** people had died in the bushfires since October 2019.

Important: Our technical support team is available to assist you during business hours only. Please keep in mind that we can only address technical difficulties during these hours. When using the product to make decisions, please take this into consideration.

Abstract This spatial product shows consistent ‘near real-time’ bushfire and prescribed burn boundaries for all jurisdictions who have the technical ability or appropriate licence conditions to provide this information. Currency Maintenance of the underlying data is the responsibility of the custodian. Geoscience Australia has automated methods of regularly checking for changes in source data. Once detected the dataset and feeds will be updated as soon as possible. NOTE: The update frequency of the underlying data from the jurisdictions varies and, in most cases, does not line up to this product’s update cycle. Date created: November 2023 Modification frequency: Every 15 Minutes Spatial Extent

West Bounding Longitude: 113° South Bounding Latitude: -44° East Bounding Longitude: 154° North Bounding Latitude: -10°

Source Information The project team initially identified a list of potential source data through jurisdictional websites and the Emergency Management LINK catalogue. These were then confirmed by each jurisdiction through the EMSINA National and EMSINA Developers networks. This Webservice contains authoritative data sourced from:

Australian Capital Territory - Emergency Service Agency (ESA) New South Wales - Rural Fire Service (RFS) Queensland - Queensland Fire and Emergency Service (QFES) South Australia - Country Fire Service (CFS)
Tasmania - Tasmania Fire Service (TFS)
Victoria – Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP)
Western Australia – Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES)

The completeness of the data within this webservice is reliant on each jurisdictional source and the information they elect to publish into their Operational Bushfire Boundary webservices. Known Limitations:

This dataset does not contain information from the Northern Territory government. This dataset contains a subset of the Queensland bushfire boundary data. The Queensland ‘Operational’ feed that is consumed within this National Database displays a the last six (6) months of incident boundaries. In order to make this dataset best represent a ‘near-real-time’ or current view of operational bushfire boundaries Geoscience Australia has filtered the Queensland data to only incorporate the last two (2) weeks data. Geoscience Australia is aware of duplicate data (features) may appear within this dataset. This duplicate data is commonly represented in the regions around state borders where it is operationally necessary for one jurisdiction to understand cross border situations. Care must be taken when summing the values to obtain a total area burnt. The data within this aggregated National product is a spatial representation of the input data received from the custodian agencies. Therefore, data quality and data completion will vary. If you wish to assess more information about specific jurisdictional data and/or data feature(s) it is strongly recommended that you contact the appropriate custodian.

The accuracy of the data attributes within this webservice is reliant on each jurisdictional source and the information they elect to publish into their Operational Bushfire Boundary webservices. Note: Geoscience Australia has, where possible, attempted to align the data to the (as of October 2023) draft National Current Incident Extent Feeds Data Dictionary. However, this has not been possible in all cases. Work to progress this alignment will be undertaken after the publication of this dataset, once this project enters a maintenance period. Catalog entry: Bushfire Boundaries – Near Real-Time Lineage Statement Version 1 and 2 (2019/20): This dataset was first built by EMSINA, Geoscience Australia, and Esri Australia staff in early January 2020 in response to the Black Summer Bushfires. The product was aimed at providing a nationally consistent dataset of bushfire boundaries. Version 1 was released publicly on 8 January 2020 through Esri AGOL software.
Version 2 of the product was released in mid-February as EMSINA and Geoscience Australia began automating the product. The release of version 2 exhibited a reformatted attributed table to accommodate these new automation scripts. The product was continuously developed by the three entities above until early May 2020 when both the scripts and data were handed over to the National Bushfire Recovery Agency. The EMSINA Group formally ended their technical involvement with this project on June 30, 2020. Version 3 (2020/21): A 2020/21 version of the National Operational Bushfire Boundaries dataset was agreed to by the Australian Government. It continued to extend upon EMSINA’s 2019/20 Version 2 product. This product was owned and managed by the Australian Government Department of Home Affairs, with Geoscience Australia identified as the technical partners responsible for development and delivery. Work on Version 3 began in August 2020 with delivery of this product occurring on 14 September 2020. Version 4 (2021/22): A 2021/22 version of the National Operational Bushfire Boundaries dataset was produced by Geoscience Australia. This product was owned and managed by Geoscience Australia, who provided both development and delivery. Work on Version 4 began in August 2021 with delivery of this product occurring on 1 September 2021. The dataset was discontinued in May 2022 because of insufficient Government funding. Version 5 (2023/25): A 2023/25 version of the National Near-Real-Time Bushfire Boundaries dataset is produced by Geoscience Australia under funding from the National Bushfire Intelligence Capability (NBIC) - CSIRO. NBIC and Geoscience Australia have also partnered with the EMSINA Group to assist with accessing and delivering this dataset. This dataset is the first time where the jurisdictional attributes are aligned to AFAC’s National Bushfire Schema.
Work on Version 5 began in August 2023 and was released in late 2023 under formal access arrangements with the States and Territories. Data Dictionary Geoscience Australia has not included attributes added automatically by spatial software processes in the table below.

Attribute Name Description

fire_id ID attached to fire (e.g. incident ID, Event ID, Burn ID).

fire_name Incident name. If available.

fire_type Binary variable to describe whether a fire was a bushfire or prescribed burn.

ignition_date The date of the ignition of a fire event. Date and time are local time zone from the State where the fire is located and stored as a string.

capt_date The date of the incident boundary was captured or updated. Date and time are local time zone from the Jurisdiction where the fire is located and stored as a string.

capt_method Categorical variable to describe the source of data used for defining the spatial extent of the fire.

area_ha Burnt area in Hectares. Currently calculated field so that all areas calculations are done in the same map projection. Jurisdiction supply area in appropriate projection to match state incident reporting system.

perim_km ) Burnt perimeter in Kilometres. Calculated field so that all areas calculations are done in the same map projection. Jurisdiction preference is that supplied perimeter calculations are used for consistency with jurisdictional reporting.

state State custodian of the data. NOTE: Currently some states use and have in their feeds cross border data

agency Agency that is responsible for the incident

date_retrieved The date and time that Geoscience Australia retrieved this data from the jurisdictions, stored as UTC. Please note when viewed in ArcGIS Online, the date is converted from UTC to your local time.

Contact Geoscience Australia, clientservices@ga.gov.au

This dataset provides state-wide fire scar mapping for major bushfires that have occurred within South Australia. It also provides fire scar mapping for prescribed burning activities that have occurred on land managed by the State Government Agencies (Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources, Forestry SA and SA Water). A landscape approach is used for fire history mapping but may be incomplete for a given reserve and region. “Burnoffs” on private land are excluded from this dataset.

As of March 9, 2020, over ** percent of the agricultural land affected by the 2019/2020 bushfires was located in Queensland. The 2019/2020 bushfire season in Australia had damaged over **** million hectares of agricultural land across the country.

This map looks at the hot spot activity captured by the MODIS satellite and updated imagery from Sentenial of Australia and shows the damage of the Australian bushfire.

Please note: This dataset contains records of fire events (prescribed burns and bushfire) on department managed lands, or fire events which have incurred costs borne by the department. It is not intended as a complete statewide dataset, and should not be used as such. The earliest records available are from 1937. Some historic map sheets have been unattainable and thus the dataset is missing some data. This dataset contains information from completed projects including the Great Western Woodlands (GWW), Gnangara Sustainability Strategy (GSS) and remote sensing of Pilbara fire scars. The GWW project used remote sensing and Landsat to digitise fires with hotspot data for date verification from the years 1970 - 1990. The GSS project assessed the current fire history records in the DBCA Swan district by verifying fires and attribution from fire records, annual fire reports, historic maps, microfiche and Fire Support System extracts. A Pilbara regional request for more accurate fire shapes and higher resolution imagery used remote sensing and Landsat to capture the years from 1999 - 2011. The dataset also includes areas of clear-felled plantation and mining rehabilitation. This data set will generally be updated twice a year - around January and July. For further information please contact the data custodian.

Fires in Australia’s Forests 2016–21 (2024) is a continental spatial dataset of the extent and frequency of planned and unplanned fires occurring in forest in the five financial years between July 2016 and June 2021, assembled for Australia's State of the Forests Report Indicator 3.1b Area of forest burnt by planned and unplanned fire. It was developed from multiple fire area datasets contributed by state and territory government agencies, after consultation with Australia’s Forest Fire Management Group. The fire dataset is then combined with forest cover information sourced from the Forests of Australia (2023) dataset (https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/forestsaustralia/forest-data-maps-and-tools/spatial-data/forest-cover), and forest tenure information sourced from the Tenure of Australia’s Forests (2023) dataset.

Planned fire: Fire started in accordance with a fire management plan or planned burning program, such as fuel-reduction burning or prescribed burning.

Unplanned fire: Fire started naturally (such as by lightning), accidentally, or deliberately (such as by arson), but not in accordance with planned fire management prescriptions. Also called bushfire or wildfire.

The dataset was compiled by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) for the National Forest Inventory (NFI), a collaborative partnership between the Australian and state and territory governments. The role of the NFI is to collate, integrate and communicate information on Australia's forests. The NFI applies a national classification to state and territory data to allow seamless integration of these datasets. Multiple independent sources of external data are used to fill data gaps and improve the quality of the final dataset.​

Forest areas burnt by fire are allocated by the month of the fire to a financial year (July–June inclusive). Where more than one fire event occurs on any one hectare during a financial year, only the first fire is recorded for that area in the financial year. Fires are also classified into two categories, planned and unplanned, based on the fire seasonality and advice from state and territory agencies.

The Fires in Australia’s forests 2016–21 (2024) dataset is produced to fulfil requirements of Australia's National Forest Policy Statement and the Regional Forests Agreement Act 2002 (Cwth), and is used by the Australian Government for domestic and international reporting.​​

Context

Current news about Australia bushfire has been spreading fast, however, the same can't be said about the datasets. This NASA FIRMS MODIS and VIIRS Fire/Hotspot provide an initial dataset for fires in Australia. My main motivation to provide this dataset was the following article:

• BBC News - Australia fires: Misleading maps and pictures go viral

See the Ideas Section at the bottom for more inspiration.

Content

The current dataset provides 4 tables from 2 NASA Satellite Instruments:

• MODIS C6 Tables

  • fire_archive_M6_96619.csv
  • fire_nrt_M6_96619.csv

• VIIRS 375m Tables

  • fire_archive_V1_96617.csv
  • fire_nrt_V1_96617.csv

The provided URLs contain more details on the two instrument differences. Each instrument contains two types of tables: Near Real Time (_nrt_) and older standard/science quality data (_archive). According to the README provided with the dataset, NRT data are replaced with standard quality data when they are available (usually with a 2-3 month lag). This time-lag can be observed on the tables by verifying the acq_date column (See available Kaggle Notebook). For more details between NRT and Archive see this link.

More information on the instruments used for this dataset can be found here and here. All columns have been annotated with the description following Kaggle format. For data provenance, see the Metadata section.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the use of data and imagery from LANCE FIRMS operated by NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) with funding provided by NASA Headquarters.

NRT VIIRS 375 m Active Fire product VNP14IMGT. Available on-line [https://earthdata.nasa.gov/firms]. doi: 10.5067/FIRMS/VIIRS/VNP14IMGT.NRT.001.

MODIS Collection 6 NRT Hotspot / Active Fire Detections MCD14DL. Available on-line [https://earthdata.nasa.gov/firms]. doi: 10.5067/FIRMS/MODIS/MCD14DL.NRT.006

Inspiration

Current news articles are a wonderful inspiration for ways to analyze this data and or combine to other datasets. Some ideas:

• Australia fires: A visual guide to the bushfire crisis
• Australia bushfires factcheck: are this year's fires unprecedented?

There is also other information that can be combined with this dataset, such as local air quality, and local alerts to increase accuracy.

Found an error? Let me know!

Feel free to post on Discussion anything strange you may find, and I will be happy to follow-up.

Australia faces frequent bushfires due to our unique climate and vegetation. Climate change has increased the risk and vulnerability to more intense bushfires, making this a complex challenge for all Australians. National bushfire data is vital for managing these challenges. Currency Last modified: 19 June 2025 Modification frequency: As needed Contact Digital Atlas of Australia

Version 2.1.0 (2025-06-19) Minor content changes Version 2.0.0 (2024-12-19) Content updates to reflect 2024 data release Version 1.1.0 (2023-12-21) Replaced embedded map products with apps Version 1.0.0 (2023-11-30) StoryMap published

Provide disaster impacts statistics by local government area (LGA). In the 2 weeks following the Pinery Bushfire (25 Nov 2015), impact assessments were conducted on affected properties.

The dataset includes:

• LGA in which the impact occurred

• List damages to main structures, buildings, vehicles.

• Describes the hazards encountered in each.

In January 2020, the Australian federal government announced a two billion Australian dollar relief package to aid the bushfire recovery after the 2019/2020 fire season. Of this fund, 100 million Australian dollars had been allocated to primary producers in the country. Most of the funds, around 1.6 billion Australian dollars, had not yet been allocated as of that month.

Australia’s Black summer

The 2019/2020 bushfire season was one of the worst to ever occur in Australia. Between October 2019 and February 2020, bush fires ravaged many parts of Australia. The bushfires were worsened by the extreme heat and drought conditions across the country. Additionally, many fires were either deliberately or accidently ignited by people. The effects were devasting on wildlife, people, property, and the environment.

What was the impact?

Due to habitat destruction, many wildlife lost their lives, with some experts estimating that over 1.5 billion animals were lost. A total of 34 people died, many through battling the fires. In New South Wales, thousands of properties were damaged or destroyed. Insurance claims had already reached 740 million Australian dollars in early January 2020. Air pollution from the smoke haze and particulate matter reached record levels in the eastern and southern states. Many Australians were affected in some way by the bush fires, with the extent of damage not yet fully assessed.

The dataset provides most recent fire scar mapping for many major fires that have burnt in a given area within or adjacent to National Parks and Wildlife South Australia (NPWSA) reserves. This data …Show full descriptionThe dataset provides most recent fire scar mapping for many major fires that have burnt in a given area within or adjacent to National Parks and Wildlife South Australia (NPWSA) reserves. This data set is derived from Fire History mapping. The most recent fire mapping can be used for operational management and planning of fire events and ecological resource management.

This spatial product was built in direct response to the public's, industry's and governments demand/requirement for a National Bushfire Boundary layer during and after the 2020 Black Summer Bushfires.

Emergency Management Spatial information Network Australia (EMSINA) members (National and the Developers) begun developing this consolidated National Bushfire Boundary Webservice on December 30, 2019. With the technical assistance of Esri Australia the first public facing product (v1) became available on January 8, 2020. Geoscience Australia staff were involved in the development and maintenance of the FME scripts.

Version 2 of the product was released in February as EMSINA and Geoscience Australia began automating the product. This release exhibited a reformatted attributed table to accommodate the new automation scripts; unfortunately this release resulted in having to release the data with new access end points.

The product was continuously developed until early May 2020. On May 4, 2020 the EMSINA Committee made the decision to stop running the script i.e. 1 month after the official end of the bushfire season.

The product and the scripting were subsequently archived on both EMSINA and GA infrastructure. The National Bushfire Recovery Agency was provided a copy of the automation scripts on May 7, 2020 and then on June 26, 2020 a complete copy of the data from January 8, 2020 to May 4, 2020 in a geodatabase format.

The EMSINA Group formally ended their technical involvement with this project on June 30, 2020.

The Emergency Management LINK (EM-LINK*) catalogue was the source for identifying the majority of the required data. The consolidated National Bushfire Boundary Webservice contains data from:

 Australian Capital Territory - Emergency Service Agency (ESA)

 New South Wales - Rural Fire Service (RFS)

 Queensland - Queensland Fire and Emergency Service (QFES)

 Queensland - Queensland Department of Environment and Science (DES)

 South Australia - Country Fire Service (CFS)

 Tasmania - Tasmania Fire Service (TFS)

 Victoria - Emergency Management Victoria (EMV)

Where EMSINA and/or Geoscience Australia had difficulty in accessing the required spatial data and/or attributes assistance was provided by the National Bushfire Recovery Agency and Emergency Management Australia.

Known Limitations of the Data:

This database does not contain information from Western Australia. Neither EMSINA nor the Australian Government were able to negotiate appropriate access to the State’s operational boundary data.

EMSINA is aware of duplicate data (features) contained within this database. This duplicate data is commonly represented in the regions around state lines where it became operationally necessary to understand cross border situations. Care must be taken when summing the values to obtain a total area burnt.

EMSINA and Geoscience Australia became aware of the following error in the database in April 2020:

• Upon receipt of the Queensland data it was mistakenly assessed as Operational Boundaries and not as Historic FY Boundaries. This data was included into the database until the mistake was discovered in early April.

The data within this aggregated National product is a representation of the input data received from the custodian agencies. Therefore, to assess the quality or find out more information about an individual feature or features it is recommend that you contact the appropriate custodian.

The TROPESS CrIS-SNPP L2 Peroxyacetyl Nitrate for Australian Fires, Standard Product contains the vertical distribution of the retrieved atmospheric state of peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), formal uncertainties, and diagnostic information measured by the CrIS instrument on the Suomi-NPP satellite. This product focuses on the Australia region (60S-0S; 100E-177.5E) for the time period from 2019-11-01 to 2020-01-31, during the outbreak of Austrailan wildfires. The NASA TRopospheric Ozone and Precursors from Earth System Sounding (TROPESS) project, uses an optimal estimation algorithm, known as the MUlti-SpEctra, MUlti-SpEcies, Multi-SEnsors (MUSES).The data files are written in the netCDF version 4 file format, and each file contains one day of data. The data have a spatial resolution of 14 km (CrIS nadir FOV), and are reported at 16 vertical levels from the surface to 0.1 hPa. The principal investigator for the TROPESS project is Kevin W. Bowman.

Important: Our technical support team is available to assist you during business hours only. Please keep in mind that we can only address technical difficulties during these hours. When using the product to make decisions, please take this into consideration.

Abstract This spatial product shows accumulating 3-hourly snapshots of bushfire and prescribed burn boundaries, consistent across all jurisdictions who have the technical ability or appropriate licence conditions to provide this information. This dataset is derived from the National Near-Real-Time Bushfire Boundaries product. Currency Maintenance of the underlying data is the responsibility of the individual custodian. NOTE: The update frequency of the underlying data from the jurisdictions varies and, in most cases, does not line up to this product’s update cycle. Date created: November 2023 Modification frequency: Every 3 Hours Spatial Extent

West Bounding Longitude: 113° South Bounding Latitude: -44° East Bounding Longitude: 154° North Bounding Latitude: -10°

Source Information This dataset is derived from the National Near-Real-Time Bushfire Boundaries product. The project team initially identified a list of potential source data through jurisdictional websites and the Emergency Management LINK catalogue. These were then confirmed by each jurisdiction through the EMSINA National and EMSINA Developers networks. This Webservice contains authoritative data sourced from:

Australian Capital Territory - Emergency Service Agency (ESA) New South Wales - Rural Fire Service (RFS) Queensland - Queensland Fire and Emergency Service (QFES) South Australia - Country Fire Service (CFS)
Tasmania - Tasmania Fire Service (TFS)
Victoria – Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP)
Western Australia – Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES)

The completeness of the data within this webservice is reliant on each jurisdictional source and the information they elect to publish into their Operational Bushfire Boundary webservices. Known Limitations:

This dataset does not contain information from the Northern Territory government. This dataset contains a subset of the Queensland bushfire boundary data. The Queensland ‘Operational’ feed that is consumed within this National Database displays a the last six (6) months of incident boundaries. In order to make this dataset best represent a ‘near-real-time’ or current view of operational bushfire boundaries Geoscience Australia has filtered the Queensland data to only incorporate the last two (2) weeks data. Geoscience Australia is aware of duplicate data (features) may appear within this dataset. This duplicate data is commonly represented in the regions around state borders where it is operationally necessary for one jurisdiction to understand cross border situations. Care must be taken when summing the values to obtain a total area burnt. The data within this aggregated National product is a spatial representation of the input data received from the custodian agencies. Therefore, data quality and data completion will vary. If you wish to assess more information about specific jurisdictional data and/or data feature(s) it is strongly recommended that you contact the appropriate custodian.

The accuracy of the data attributes within this webservice is reliant on each jurisdictional source and the information they elect to publish into their Operational Bushfire Boundary webservices. Note: Geoscience Australia has, where possible, attempted to align the data to the (as of October 2023) draft National Current Incident Extent Feeds Data Dictionary. However, this has not been possible in all cases. Work to progress this alignment will be undertaken after the publication of this dataset, once this project enters a maintenance period. Catalog entry: Bushfire Boundaries – 3-Hourly Accumulation Lineage Statement Version 1 (2021/22): A 2021/22 version of the National 3 Hourly Cumulative Bushfire Boundaries dataset was produced by Geoscience Australia. This product was owned and managed by Geoscience Australia, who provided both development and delivery. Work on Version 1 of this dataset began in August 2021 with delivery occurring in September 2021. The dataset was discontinued in May 2022 due to insufficient Government funding. Version 2 (2023/25): A 2023/25 version of National Near-Real-Time Bushfire Boundaries dataset is produced by Geoscience Australia under funding from the National Bushfire Intelligence Capability (NBIC) - CSIRO. NBIC and Geoscience Australia have also partnered with the EMSINA Group to assist with accessing and delivering this dataset. This dataset is the first time where the jurisdictional attributes are aligned to AFAC’s National Bushfire Schema.
Work on Version 2 began in August 2023 and was released in late 2023 under formal access arrangements with the States and Territories. Data Dictionary Geoscience Australia has not included attributes added automatically by spatial software processes in the table below.

Attribute Name Description

fire_id ID attached to fire (e.g. incident ID, Event ID, Burn ID).

fire_name Incident name. If available.

fire_type Binary variable to describe whether a fire was a bushfire or prescribed burn.

ignition_date The date of the ignition of a fire event. Date and time are local time zone from the State where the fire is located and stored as a string.

capt_date The date of the incident boundary was captured or updated. Date and time are local time zone from the Jurisdiction where the fire is located and stored as a string.

capt_method Categorical variable to describe the source of data used for defining the spatial extent of the fire.

area_ha Burnt area in Hectares. Currently calculated field so that all areas calculations are done in the same map projection. Jurisdiction supply area in appropriate projection to match state incident reporting system.

perim_km ) Burnt perimeter in Kilometres. Calculated field so that all areas calculations are done in the same map projection. Jurisdiction preference is that supplied perimeter calculations are used for consistency with jurisdictional reporting.

state State custodian of the data. NOTE: Currently some states use and have in their feeds cross border data

agency Agency that is responsible for the incident

date_retrieved The date and time that Geoscience Australia retrieved this data from the jurisdictions, stored as UTC. Please note when viewed in ArcGIS Online, the date is converted from UTC to your local time.

Contact Contact: Geoscience Australia clientservices@ga.gov.au