A free, open-source project that helps firefighters and everyday people predict wildfire risk and spot ignitions early — before a spark becomes a catastrophe.
Why Fire Spotter exists. Wildfires move faster than the systems meant to warn us. The earliest minutes decide everything — yet the tools to read fire risk are often locked behind agencies, paywalls, or jargon. Fire Spotter puts that capability in the open: free for the volunteer fire department, the rural family, and the researcher alike.
Fire Spotter's code is public and free to inspect, use, and improve. When lives and homes are on the line, the logic that predicts danger should be something anyone can audit and trust — not a black box.
Fire departments can deploy it on their own hardware. Researchers can validate and extend the models. Developers can contribute improvements that flow back to every community using it.
Prioritize patrols and staging with clear, local risk readings.
Know when conditions turn dangerous near your home.
Monitor risk across large or remote areas.
Build on an open model and contribute back.
Fire Spotter turns the signals that drive fire behavior into a risk picture anyone can act on.
Ingests weather, wind, humidity, drought, vegetation/fuel, and terrain data for an area.
Combines those signals into a wildfire-risk score that reflects how likely fire is to start and spread.
Shows risk on a clear map and flags hotspots so attention goes where it's needed most.
Surfaces early-warning signals so an ignition can be caught while it's still small.
A clear, location-based risk level built from weather, fuel, and terrain inputs.
Visualize danger across an area to see where conditions are most severe.
Surface the earliest indicators of an ignition so crews can respond fast.
Get notified when conditions cross into dangerous territory.
Built to work with public weather and environmental data sources.
Run it on your own infrastructure — no dependence on a paid service.
Open codebase that researchers and developers can adapt and improve.
No license fees, ever — especially for the volunteer and underfunded departments who need it most.
It's open source — every contribution protects more communities.
Spread the word so more departments and residents can find and use it.
Improve the models, add data sources, or fix issues. Pull requests welcome.
Researchers and responders: help test predictions against real conditions in your region.
Explore the project, deploy it for your department, or contribute. If you'd like help integrating Fire Spotter, reach out.