Joint Research Centre (Europese Commissie)
The European Commission's science and research centre. Produces, among other things, the Global Human Settlement Layer.
Sources explained
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.
Global Human Settlement Layer
Raster maps of the whole world: how much is built up and how many people live there, per 100-metre or 1-kilometre cell, for 1975, 1980 and so on up to 2030. Made from satellite images and censuses, the same way for every country.
PVGIS, solar power per location
The Joint Research Centre's Photovoltaic Geographical Information System calculates for any coordinate how much sunlight falls and what a solar PV system yields: per year, per month, per hour, for a fixed or tracking system, and a typical meteorological year. It uses radiation data from satellite images (PVGIS-SARAH3 for Europe). There is a web tool and an API without registration. Note: robots.txt disallows all automated visitors, so the Open Data Index does not call PVGIS itself.