Fire Movement Animation

• 

  Fire Movement Animation

Inspiration

Recent Los Angeles fires, which started in Palisades and Eaton areas on 7 January 2025, have traumatized many people and burnt down many properties. Areas affected by such fires are generally barricaded by the Fire Department, and people displaced from there cannot visit their properties. Many of these people desire to monitor movement of fires around their properties.

What it does

This project has built an interactive web page for animating movement of fires around a location. This may need the location's latitude and longitude, which can be obtained using maps . google . com or such other website. This version uses NASA EarthData data of USA for the period 1 to 11 January 2025.

How we built it

• Downloaded metadata of satellite images of fires during 1 to 11 January 2025, from NASA's EarthData site.
• Cretaed Fires.csv file with datetime, latitude, and longitude columns.
• Created a local web server based on the open-source Python Flask framework.
• Wrote necessary Python code in app.py file for server-client interactions.
• Wrote fma.html file for the user to enter the location's latitude+longitude or address+city.
• Wrote fmares.html file for the code to generate an animation of movement of fires around the selected location.
• Merged this web server's files into my taxai.us web site.

Challenges we ran into

I used Nominatim OpenStreetMap API for fetching latitude+longitude of a location. However, the API's restrictions do not allow the code to fetch latitude+longitude of a location.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This tool can be immensely useful for tracking wild fires imaged by satellites. It does not require the user to download or install anything.

What we learned

I learned animation features offered by the Python Matplotlib package. I also learned the Nominatim OpenStreetMap API.

What's next for Fire Movement Animation

I will add the street map of the region tracked, in the background of the animation window.

Note

Not being a high-school or college student, I may not be eligible to win a monetary prize of this hackathon. I am submitting this project thinking that it can help others.

Links

• Web site to demonstrate Fire Movement Animation: https://taxai.us/fma
• GitHub Repository of the code: https://github.com/Lapyl/Fire-Movement-Animation
• NASA metadata of satellite images: https://nrt3.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/archive/FIRMS
• NASA video of Black Hole Beam Causing Stellar Eruptions: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14674

Built With

• api
• flask
• html
• matplotlib
• pinnacle
• python