# EFFIS wildfires (Copernicus)

The European Forest Fire Information System maps fires in natural areas from satellite imagery (MODIS, VIIRS and Sentinel-2). For each burnt area: date, area in hectares, municipality, the outline as a polygon, what was growing and how much lies in Natura 2000. For the Netherlands 53 areas since 2003, the largest near Deurne (April 2020, 649 hectares) and Elburg (April 2026, 421 hectares). Plus an open map service with the fire danger for the coming days (Fire Weather Index) and today's hotspots.

- Publisher: Copernicus, Joint Research Centre (Europese Commissie)
- Area: Europe · Finest detail: burnt area (polygon)
- Period: 2003 – heden · Refreshed: daily
- Access: Open · Licence: CC BY 4.0 (EFFIS Data License)
- Join keys: datum, gemeente (naam), omtrek (GeoJSON)
- Status: warn (2026-08-27) · 53 gebieden; nieuwste brand: Oldebroek, 2026-08-25, 12 ha
- URL: https://forest-fire.emergency.copernicus.eu

## What can you do with it?
- **Wildfires on the map.** Draw the outline of every burnt heath or forest on a map; the response contains the polygons as GeoJSON.
- **Compare fire years.** Add up the hectares per year: 2020 (Deurnese Peel) and 2026 stand out.
- **Drought and fires.** Put the fire dates next to the rainfall of the weeks before (KNMI) and next to the fire danger from the map service.

## How to process it
1. **Request the burnt areas.** One call per country, no key. The response has count, next (next page) and results with per area firedate, area_ha, commune, province, shape (MultiPolygon) and land cover in percent.
   `https://api.effis.emergency.copernicus.eu/rest/2/burntareas/current/?country=NL`
2. **Fire danger as a map layer.** The WMS has layers for the Fire Weather Index and its components (mf010.fwi, .ffmc, .dmc, .dc, .isi, .bui), hotspots (viirs.hs, modis.hs) and burnt areas (effis.nrt.ba).
   `https://maps.effis.emergency.copernicus.eu/effis?service=WMS&request=GetCapabilities`

## Interesting combinations
- From hotspot to burnt area → [nasa-firms](https://www.opendataindex.nl/en/bron/nasa-firms.md) via datum en plaats. FIRMS sees the fire while it burns (375-metre points), EFFIS measures the burnt area afterwards.
- Which nature burnt? → [natura2000](https://www.opendataindex.nl/en/bron/natura2000.md) via omtrek. EFFIS already gives the share in Natura 2000; with the PDOK polygons you see which area it was.
- Did the fire service raise the phase beforehand? → [natuurbrandrisico](https://www.opendataindex.nl/en/bron/natuurbrandrisico.md) via datum en veiligheidsregio. The wildfire risk per safety region is only shown as the current state on brandweer.nl; store it daily yourself to compare it with the fires.

## Similar sources
- [nasa-firms](https://www.opendataindex.nl/en/bron/nasa-firms.md): Hotspots per satellite pass, not the burnt area.
- [GWIS (Global Wildfire Information System)](https://gwis.jrc.ec.europa.eu): The same system for the whole world.

## What to watch out for
- **Only the larger fires.** EFFIS mainly sees the larger fires; for the Netherlands the list runs from under a hectare to 649 hectares, but there are only 53 since 2003. Many small heath fires are missing, so this is not a complete fire statistic. A year without an area means: nothing mapped.
- **Earlier years sparse.** Before 2018 there are only four areas for the Netherlands (2003, 2011, 2014, 2015). Since then there are more per year; whether that is because of more fires or better imagery, EFFIS does not say. Compare years with care.
- **Municipality and area are names.** commune and province are names (Bergen (NH.), Veluwe), not CBS codes. Link via the outline to the municipal boundaries.

## API (REST (JSON, Django REST Framework) + OGC WMS 1.1.1)

- Base: https://api.effis.emergency.copernicus.eu/rest/2
- Access: No key or account (tested). No robots.txt on the EFFIS hosts. (tested)
- Formats: json, png, kml, geotiff
- Size: 53 burnt areas in the Netherlands (2003–2026, together 3,049 ha); across Europe and surroundings 129,710 (16 Oct 2026) (tested)
- Filtering: Django filters as query parameters: <field>, <field>__gte, __lte, __in, plus ordering.; =, __gt, __gte, __lt, __lte, __in, intersects, contains

### Endpoints
- `GET /burntareas/current/`: Burnt areas (mapped from satellite images) with date, area, municipality, region, shape and land cover. Filter on country, date, area, geometry.
- `GET https://maps.effis.emergency.copernicus.eu/effis?service=WMS&request=GetCapabilities`: Map layers: mf010.fwi (Fire Weather Index) and sub-indices ffmc, dc, isi, bui; hotspots viirs.hs and modis.hs; burnt areas modis.ba.poly(.today/.week/.month/.season/.<year>) and effis.nrt.ba.
- `GET https://maps.effis.emergency.copernicus.eu/effis?service=WMS&request=GetMap&layers=mf010.fwi&time=JJJJ-MM-DD&…`: Map image of a layer for a day (ISO 8601 time dimension); formats png, jpeg, tiff, svg, kml, pdf.

### Parameters
- `country / country__in`: Country, e.g. NL; several with country__in=NL,BE. (tested)
- `firedate / firedate__gte / __gt / __lt / __lte`: Fire date; a full date-time is required (2025-01-01T00:00:00). A date only gives 400 'Enter a valid date/time.' (tested)
- `area_ha__gte / __gt / __lt / __lte`: Area in hectares (NL ≥ 100 ha: 7 areas). (tested)
- `lastupdate / lastupdate__gte …`: Last update of the area: handy to track changes. (from the description)
- `province`: Region as EFFIS names it (Veluwe, …), not a code. (tested)
- `intersects / contains / contained / covered`: Spatial filters (in the filter form; not tested by us). (from the description)
- `ordering`: Sort, e.g. ordering=-firedate (newest first) or firedate. (tested)
- `limit / offset`: Paging; the response has count, next and previous. (tested)

### Fields per burnt area (8)
`id` tekst, `firedate` datetime, `area_ha` tekst (getal), `commune / province / countryful` tekst, `broadlea, conifer, mixed, othernatlc, agriareas, artifsurf …` tekst (getal), `percna2k` tekst (getal), `shape / centroid / bbox` tekst (GeoJSON als Python-dict), `lastupdate` datetime

### Limits and pitfalls
- No documented limit. Without limit all 53 Dutch areas came in one page; for Europe (129,710) always paginate with limit and offset. (tested)
- Numbers are strings ('12', '100.00000000') and shape, centroid and bbox are Python dicts as text (single quotes), not real GeoJSON: replace ' with " or use ast.literal_eval. (tested)
- Unknown parameters are ignored (?year=2025 and ?page=2 simply returned all 53). Other paths such as /rest/2/ return 404. (tested)
- The 'next' link starts with http:// instead of https://. (tested)
- Not complete: before 2018 there are only four Dutch areas. Very small ones are included too (area_ha 0 and 1): filter on area yourself. (experience)
- The WMS time dimension has a fixed default (2021-01-01) and no 'latest' date: always pass time. (experience)

### Example
```
https://api.effis.emergency.copernicus.eu/rest/2/burntareas/current/?country=NL&ordering=-firedate&limit=3
```

## How to fetch it

### curl
```bash
curl "https://api.effis.emergency.copernicus.eu/rest/2/burntareas/current/?country=NL"
```

### python
```python
import requests

kop = {"User-Agent": "mijn-onderzoek/1.0 (+jij@voorbeeld.nl)"}
url = "https://api.effis.emergency.copernicus.eu/rest/2/burntareas/current/?country=NL"
gebieden = []
while url:
    d = requests.get(url, headers=kop).json()
    gebieden += d["results"]
    url = d["next"]
for g in sorted(gebieden, key=lambda g: -g["area_ha"])[:5]:
    print(g["firedate"][:10], g["commune"], g["area_ha"], "ha,", round(float(g["percna2k"])), "% Natura 2000")
```

## What you can build with it
- [Wildfire map: today's risk, hotspots and burnt land](https://www.opendataindex.nl/en/bouwen/natuurbrand-kaart.md): One map of the Netherlands per safety region with the fire service's phase, the fire danger for today and the coming days (EFFIS), the hotspots satellites saw this week (without factories) and the land that burnt this year, with KNMI drought data alongside.


## Examples with real figures (2)

For each example the finding, the reference date and the call that fetches exactly these figures.

- **The largest wildfires in the Netherlands according to EFFIS: most Deurne, April 2020 (649 hectares), then Elburg, April 2026 and Ede, April 2014** (2003–2026). Table burntareas, country=NL. [Example](https://www.opendataindex.nl/en/voorbeeld/effis-grootste-branden)
  - `https://api.effis.emergency.copernicus.eu/rest/2/burntareas/current/?country=NL`
- **Burnt natural land in the Netherlands mapped by EFFIS: 330 hectares in 2025, 80% more than in 2018** (2025). Table burntareas, country=NL. [Example](https://www.opendataindex.nl/en/voorbeeld/effis-hectare-per-jaar)
  - `https://api.effis.emergency.copernicus.eu/rest/2/burntareas/current/?country=NL`