The fires that are ravaging Spain, seen from the space and through the maps

Although the heat wave that we have been supporting for days begins to send and, According to data from the State Meteorology Agency (AEMET)the maximum temperatures will descend in a generalized way this week, the forest fires They are still out of control.

So far this year, More than 344,400 hectares have already burned throughout Spain. A figure that makes 2025 one of the worst seasons of forest fires that Europe has lived in the last two decades.

With this panorama, it is normal to ask how the situation evolves. The reality is that the foci constantly change. However, there are technological tools open and accessible both for the general public and for the authorities.

Two of the most useful are the alert system for Google Maps crisis and the emergency viewfinder of the Copernicus Program of the European Union. Both resources are available for free and you can consult them right now.

Google Maps is one of those applications that we use daily, but we don’t always know all its functions. To see the active forest fires You have to enter the mobile app or maps.google.com and play on the layer icon, in the upper right corner.

In the section Map type You don’t have to change anything. The focus is in Map detailswhere we must select the Forest Fire option.

The system will show the affected areas with relevant information, such as the level of gravity and the date of the last update. If we play in any of the marked areas (for example, Ourense, one of the most complicated when publishing this article), we will access a file with the estimated perimeterlinks to official sources and related articles.

Google Maps is not limited to showing points on the map: behind there is a system that combines Ia with satellite images. To detect and delimit forest fires, use a model of Deep Learning Trained with satellite data such as GOES-16, GOES-18, Himawari-9 or European meteosat, among others.

It also relies on sensors such as Modis (of Aqua and Terra satellites) and VIIRS (aboard S-NPP and JPSS-1). All that information is processed through Superresolution techniques To identify active spotlights and update maps with precision.

In the case of the Copernicus system, you have to access the page Current Sition ViewerAvailable on the web forest-fire.emerncy.copernicus.eu/applications.

The viewfinder is quite intuitive. In the left lateral menu you have to locate the Rapid Damage Assessment section and focus on the Active Fire layer.

There are two selectable data sources:

• Modiswhich collects information through satellite sensors Terra and Aqua.
• VIIRSwhich uses similar algorithms to detect active spotlights aboard the satellite Suomi NPP (National Polar-Footing Partnership).

Both layers allow to visualize in real time the fires detected from space, and are a valuable tool to closely follow the situation both in Spain and in the rest of Europe.

Images | Copernicus (Emergency Management Service) | Google Maps

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