Sources and transparency
ATLAS has an informational and educational purpose: it makes recent natural events easier to understand through a global representation. It is not an alert, forecasting, operational-monitoring or emergency-response system. Sources are identified in event details and on this page.
| Source | Use in ATLAS | Nature |
|---|---|---|
| NASA EONET | Wildfires, cyclones and volcanic activity when recent records exist. | Open, non-exhaustive catalogue of curated natural events. |
| USGS Earthquake Hazards Program | Recent earthquakes, magnitude, depth, position and updates. | Public GeoJSON feeds. |
| Copernicus EMS Rapid Mapping | Recent emergency-mapping activations related to wildfires or floods. | An activation is an official mapping request: by itself it does not confirm the phenomenon, its full extent or continuing status. For floods it is not presented as a global observation of inundated extent. © European Union; attribution required. |
| Copernicus EFFIS | Recent MODIS/VIIRS NRT-derived burned-area perimeters with dates, area and administrative location. | ATLAS queries the official WFS, preserves geometry and applies a 100 ha and seven-day threshold. A derived burned area does not by itself confirm an active wildfire, its cause or local impacts. |
| Natural Resources Canada · CWFIS (Canadian Forest Service) | Active Wildfires in Canada, layer public:cwfif_national_activefires: active fires reported by Canadian agencies, with identifier, control status, reported area and status date. | ATLAS normalizes and adapts the data, excludes prescribed burns and records below 100 ha, and applies the recency window to the status date. The location is approximate and does not necessarily represent the perimeter. |
| INPE · Programa Queimadas | Eventos de Fogo: static snapshot generated from eventos_ativos.kml, restricted to active events explicitly classified by INPE as Incêndio. | ATLAS normalizes the records and preserves their SHA-256. It excludes isolated hotspots, possible starts and anthropogenic activity. The event integrates hotspots in space and time, but its classification is provisional and the point is not a burned area or confirmed perimeter. |
| NSW Rural Fire Service | Local snapshot of Current Incidents GeoJSON for current New South Wales Bush Fire and Grass Fire incidents. | ATLAS excludes Planned Burn, Hazard Reduction, Burn Off, Planned Event and every non-vegetation incident. Approximately 30-minute updates; CC BY 4.0. Positions can be approximate and incidents without precise mapping may be placed at the centre of an administrative area. |
| Emergency Management Victoria · VicEmergency | Local snapshot of the multi-hazard Events GeoJSON; ATLAS retains only current incidents whose structured type identifies a vegetation fire. | Representations are joined only by an official sourceId/id. CAP urgency, severity and certainty describe the warning rather than physical fire intensity. CC BY 3.0 Australia; attributed to State of Victoria, Australia, while preserving the time ATLAS received the feed. |
| Queensland Fire Department | Local Current Bushfire Incidents snapshot restricted to FIRE VEGETATION records. | ATLAS excludes FIRE PERMITTED BURN and every other type. Approximately 30-minute updates; CC BY 4.0. Points represent the reported general area, not the fire front, perimeter or exact physical centre. |
| NOAA IBTrACS v04r01 | Global tropical-cyclone tracks from the ACTIVE subset, consolidated with NASA EONET by spatial, temporal and name agreement. | Provisional best track updated several times per week. Track, intensity and status may be revised; systems marked as dissipated do not remain in the active selection on their own. |
| USGS Volcano Hazards Program | Official notices for U.S. volcanoes with level, colour and latest update. | A notice may describe a pause or a level change and does not necessarily imply an ongoing eruption. |
| INGV · Osservatorio Etneo | Local snapshot of public listing metadata from volcanic communications and VONA for Etna, Stromboli and Vulcano when a recent eligible operational signal exists. | The date is the official publication time, not the phenomenon time. The VONA code is shown only as an aviation colour code, not as a general hazard level or automatic proof of eruption. ATLAS neither reads nor reuses PDF contents. Page metadata is attributed to INGV-OE under CC BY 4.0; its scope is Sicily and the Osservatorio Etneo operational area, not global volcano coverage. |
| Copernicus GDO · Meteorological Drought Tracking 2.0.0 | Separate territorial meteorological-drought layer; it displays only clusters explicitly marked on-going by the source. | SPI-3 ERA5 product clustered with DBSCAN, CC BY 4.0. It is not a point event or a direct observation of local impacts; consolidated polygons are excluded. |
| Natural Earth 1:50m · Admin 0 Map Units and Tiny Countries | Land, offshore, open-ocean, country, territory and region geoclassification. | Public-domain data, reproducibly simplified. Cartographic boundaries do not express a political position by ATLAS. |
| NASA Blue Marble | Daytime Earth texture. | Earth-observation imagery. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory. |
| NASA Black Marble | Nighttime Earth texture and lights. | Night-light imagery. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory. |
| CountryInfo | Simplified geographic boundaries used to highlight countries. | Open dataset distributed under the MIT License. |
| geoBoundaries gbOpen | Multipart territorial geometries in the local catalogue for Spain, Portugal and Fiji. | Open geographic data; attribution and conditions are documented in the local credits. |
CWFIS and INPE licences and attribution
These third-party source licences apply only to their respective data, products and adaptations where relevant. They do not become the general licence for the ATLAS application, code, identity or original content unless expressly stated.
CWFIS · Canada
Attribution: Canadian Forest Service. Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS), Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre, Edmonton, Alberta.
The Active Wildfires in Canada product is used under the Open Government Licence – Canada, version 2.0, which permits copying, modification, adaptation, normalization, combination, publication, redistribution and commercial use of the data with appropriate attribution. ATLAS normalizes and adapts the data; Natural Resources Canada and CWFIS do not endorse ATLAS. The data are dynamic and approximate and may not reflect the latest situation. For operational information, consult the provincial or territorial fire agencies or Parks Canada; CWFIS is not presented here as an official operational fire-management or emergency tool.
INPE · Eventos de Fogo
Attribution: Source: Programa Queimadas — INPE (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais), Eventos de Fogo product. Data used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Data normalized by ATLAS.
The licence permits copying, redistribution, transformation, normalization, adaptation, combination, generation of derived information and commercial use of these data, with attribution to the original source. ATLAS identifies its changes, normalizations, processing or enrichment as its own. Adaptations or derived datasets to which the ShareAlike condition applies are kept under CC BY-SA 4.0. This scope is limited to data and adaptations derived from Eventos de Fogo: it does not by itself license the ATLAS application, code, identity or original content. INPE does not endorse, certify or validate ATLAS or its interpretations, and the data carry no warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. ATLAS does not replace the competent official sources and is not an official emergency service.
Methodological reference: Bernini, H.; Morelli, F.; Carvalho, F.G.M.d.; Benedito, G.d.S.; Silva, W.M.d.S.S.; Melo, S.L.V.d. “Modeling Multi-Sensor Daily Fire Events in Brazil: The DescrEVE Relational Framework for Wildfire Monitoring.” Remote Sensing, 2026, 18, 606. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18040606.
What you can do
The general guidance in “What you can do” is supported by the following official resources:
- Wildfires: WHO and IFRC.
- Cyclones: IFRC.
- Earthquakes: USGS and WHO.
- Volcanic activity: USGS, WHO and IFRC.
- Floods: WHO and IFRC.
- Droughts: WHO and IFRC.
Visual resources
The stars are a visual background generated in code and do not represent real astronomical positions. The clouds are a procedural visual representation and do not show current cloud cover. The oceans are enhanced in the shader from the daytime texture; no water layer or additional API is used. The daytime and nighttime textures are credited to NASA Blue Marble and NASA Black Marble.
NASA EONET is a catalogue that aggregates events from different sources. ATLAS preserves original links when available, normalizes geometries and dates, and uses a representative location for the marker; that location does not always describe the full affected extent.
Each provider adapter is queried independently. ATLAS publishes one provisional selection and one final selection of up to 250 events so that a slow or unavailable source does not block the globe. ATLAS distinguishes instrumental observations, curated events, official mapping activations, agency-reported active fires, provider-classified events, derived burned areas, provisional cyclone tracks, official volcano notices and official volcanic operational communications. A Copernicus Rapid Mapping activation or EFFIS perimeter is not presented as confirmation of an active wildfire. Volcanic activity does not automatically mean eruption. When two sources match strongly in space, time and meaning, one situation is retained with a primary source and supporting sources; uncertain cases are not merged.
Updates and cache
ATLAS requests the feeds when the experience opens. Timestamps from Copernicus EMS Rapid Mapping and the USGS Volcano Hazards Program that are documented as UTC are interpreted as UTC even when the source string omits a time-zone suffix. If a source fails, it may temporarily use a recent copy stored on the device and identifies this on screen. Old responses are not silently presented as current.
The GDO layer is transformed at build time from an official archive pinned by URL and SHA-256. Each release preserves the observed period, production time and excluded counts; it does not update by itself between ATLAS releases.
The INGV-OE snapshot is generated locally from two public HTML tables and preserves the UTC timestamp and SHA-256 of each response. It only reuses volcano, publication date, public communication type and VONA colour code. A later end-of-phenomenon or return-to-normal communication excludes the earlier signal. The browser does not query INGV and no PDF contents are accessed.
The Australian snapshots are generated locally from the official NSW RFS, VicEmergency and Queensland QFD feeds. Each source is downloaded, validated and filtered independently; the browser never queries those feeds. The resulting coverage is limited to New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland and does not constitute complete national coverage of Australia.
Rules, selection and interpretation
Visible events are normalized into five families: wildfires, earthquakes, cyclones, floods and volcanic activity. ATLAS distinguishes start date, last meaningful update, last observed activity and status. Seven days identify new or recently updated situations but are not a universal expiry. The window applies to the last meaningful update: 7 days for earthquakes, 21 for cyclones, 45 for wildfires, 30 for floods and 90 for volcanic activity. These windows retain prolonged activity only when there is a recent meaningful update and reduce old notices without new information.
The final selection deterministically applies evidence, recency, relevance and source quality. It then progressively reduces the marginal gain of further records from the same source within a category and of phenomena in the same category that occupy a 4-degree cell or lie within 100 km of events already selected. There are no continental quotas, automatic rewards for empty regions or hard provider caps. The global limit is set to 250 events after comparing 200, 250 and 300 with the current sources; 250 preserves fluidity and avoids the spatial concentration observed at 300. This priority organizes the visual narrative; it is not an official risk classification.
Visible titles are built from the original name without repeating the category, preserving place names when no safe translation exists. A coordinate is a reported or representative location, not necessarily the centre or full extent of the event. Territorial relations use simplified geometry and do not equal an official impact assessment.
Countries and cross-border effects
A point event is considered to occur in a country when its coordinate falls inside the simplified boundary. When that geometry cannot resolve a discontinuous territory, ATLAS may use a country or unambiguous region explicitly provided by the source and, finally, a local table of verified regions. Maritime events are not attributed by proximity alone. Tracks and polygons may associate a phenomenon with other territories. “Affects or is related” indicates an available geometric relationship, not an official impact assessment.
Day, night and rotation
Lighting approximately calculates solar declination, the equation of time and the subsolar point from UTC. Earth rotates at real speed; during a short visit the movement may be practically imperceptible.
Sources evaluated but not integrated
| Source | Assessment | Current decision |
|---|---|---|
| Copernicus GWIS | Global thermal-detection, danger and burned-area layers with different meanings; some evidence is sourced from FIRMS. | Not integrated: the tested public global service did not provide a structured, bounded WFS response with stable event identity and geometry. ATLAS does not duplicate the same FIRMS-derived detection as a new source without demonstrable consolidation. |
| NASA FIRMS | Near-real-time thermal detections; the API needs a free key and can return tens of thousands of hotspots per day. | Not currently integrated: each hotspot is not a wildfire. ATLAS has a local preprocessor that queries 13 controlled regions for 1–5 days, rejects low-confidence detections or records without positive FRP, and groups observations that are close in space and time. It could only publish a static snapshot labelled as an ATLAS-inferred entity; neither the browser nor a new Function would query FIRMS. Real execution remains pending a local FIRMS_MAP_KEY. |
| Copernicus GFM / GloFAS | GFM produces observed/derived-observed flood extent from Sentinel-1; GloFAS provides hydrological forecasts. | Not integrated. The queried STAC catalogue declares a proprietary license; its polygons are tile footprints and the observed extent is stored in GeoTIFF, so a correct territorial layer requires license clarification and server-side vectorisation/filtering. GloFAS forecasts must remain separate and be labelled as forecasts. |
| NASA LANCE MODIS/VIIRS Global Flood | Near-real-time global raster masks of observed water and flooding, distributed as tiles. | Not integrated: automated download requires Earthdata Login, the product does not supply a flood-episode entity, and turning GeoTIFF tiles into usable areas requires substantial local mosaicking, filtering and vectorisation. |
| NOAA VIIRS Global Flood Map | Observed global flood-water fraction in a daily 375 m product. | Not integrated: it is distributed as large NetCDF/TAR sets and does not provide consolidated episodes or vector geometries; its recurring transformation exceeds the volume and processing that are reasonable for this release's zero-cost static workflow. |
| UNOSAT flood products | Emergency-specific satellite flood analyses, often with downloadable geometries. | Not integrated: the catalogue is episodic rather than a uniform operational worldwide feed, and licensing and source-imagery terms must be verified for each individual product. |
| Other GDO / EDO indicators | CDI, soil moisture and agricultural impact risk, among other territorial indicators. | Not currently integrated. ATLAS uses only Meteorological Drought Tracking 2.0.0 as a separate territorial layer and does not reinterpret other indicators. |
| Smithsonian GVP | Global Weekly Report and documentary WFS for volcanoes and eruptions. | Not integrated: the published terms authorize personal, educational and other non-commercial uses and require prior permission for other uses. ATLAS does not presume broader reuse permission. |
| NOAA Tsunami Warning System | Official CAP/Atom advisories. | Not integrated directly because of CORS restrictions. ATLAS does not infer a tsunami from an earthquake. |
Hosting, privacy and artificial intelligence
ATLAS is published primarily as a static site and PWA on Netlify. The browser directly queries the identified external providers. One minimal serverless function, with no secrets or database, resolves the Open Graph metadata of shared links from official event identifiers; it does not participate in selection or transform the application's operational data. ATLAS does not expose private keys. The availability, frequency and terms of those services may change. Optional location is used locally once and is not displayed, stored or transmitted by ATLAS.
Generative artificial intelligence has supported development, language review and documentation. It does not decide in real time what is an emergency or generate events: the application applies deterministic adapters and rules to data from identified providers. Editorial and technical responsibility remains with the creator.
Official AI-transparency references: European Commission transparency obligations, Article 50 of the AI Act, and resources from Spain’s Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (AESIA).
Limitations
- No single source is an exhaustive list of every phenomenon on Earth.
- Floods appear only when CEMS publishes a recent, open Rapid Mapping activation related to that phenomenon. This activation coverage is episodic and is not a continuous worldwide observation of inundated extent. The territorial drought layer only shows records explicitly marked on-going by GDO; when the official snapshot contains none, it reports zero instead of reusing consolidated polygons.
- A detection or activation is not presented as a confirmed wildfire or eruption.
- Deduplication is conservative and may retain nearby records when the match is not strong.
- Boundaries are simplified and may not represent every territory or dispute.
- ATLAS does not issue alerts and does not replace official services.