MTG-FCI true-colour images of the Iberian Peninsula on 15 August 2025, 06:40 to 18:10 UTC, showing smoke plumes spreading from the fires of north-west Spain and Portugal, with their detected fire perimeters in red
IGNIS SPECULA

MTG-FCI true colour, 15 Aug 2025, 06:40–18:10 UTC every 10 min, with detected fire perimeters in red

From historical wildfire exposure to near-real-time threat monitoring

A proposed satellite-based service to help organisations understand wildfire exposure and monitor emerging threats to critical infrastructure and distributed assets.

Discuss a pilot application Read about the services

The opportunity

With climate change lengthening fire seasons and extending wildfire activity into new regions, wildfire hazards pose growing challenges for energy, transport, telecommunications and industrial infrastructure. Asset managers need information that connects long-term exposure with the evolution of ongoing fire events.

IGNIS SPECULA aims to bring these perspectives together through Earth observation, environmental information and advanced analysis.

Two complementary services

One view of the hazard, from the historical record to the fire happening now.

ILong-term wildfire risk assessment

Time scale: years

Retrospective analysis of wildfire activity and environmental conditions to characterise historical exposure, identify spatial and seasonal patterns, and compare risks across sites or asset portfolios.

Potential uses

  • Infrastructure planning
  • Prioritisation of mitigation measures
  • Risk or insurance assessments
Example: South Africa, 2003–2025. Click to enlarge.

IINear-real-time wildfire monitoring

Time scale: days to half-hours

Frequent observation of active fires to support awareness of events developing near assets of interest. The service would aim to provide timely information on fire location, evolution and potential exposure.

Helping users

  • Track fire location and evolution
  • Prioritise attention across assets
  • Inform operational decisions
Example: Freches e Torres fire, Portugal, 15 Aug 2025. Click to play.

Potential users and applications

The services are intended for organisations managing assets spread across fire-prone landscapes:

  • Wind and solar farms
  • Electricity networks
  • Transport corridors
  • Telecommunications infrastructure
  • Industrial sites

They may also be relevant to insurers, risk-management organisations and civil protection agencies.

Development and partnership opportunity

The concept builds on research expertise in wildfire science, satellite observations and environmental modelling. An upcoming European Space Agency (ESA) funding opportunity could support the development and demonstration of an operational service with an industrial partner.

At this stage, we are seeking discussions with potential end users to better understand their needs and identify relevant pilot applications.

Contact

Tell us which sites or networks you manage and the wildfire questions you face. We will explore whether a pilot application fits.

Who we are

Two research scientists with nearly 20 years of experience each in fire and plume monitoring and fire modelling, gained through work in Europe, the USA and Australia, with experience in academia, government and industry.

Adrien Guyot and Ronan Paugam

contact [at] ignis-specula [dot] com

Initial expressions of interest would not imply a financial or contractual commitment.

Example: wildfire exposure across South Africa, 2003–2025

Map of South Africa coloured by how often fire returns and how intensely it burns in each cell, with two charts of the number of fires per year exceeding a given fire size and a given spread rate

From 23 years of satellite fire observations, we reconstructed about 135,000 fire events across South Africa. The map shows, for each 5 km² cell, how often fire returns and how intensely it burns. Dark blue marks areas that burn often and intensely, such as the eastern grasslands of Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal. Pink marks areas that burn rarely but intensely, such as the fynbos mountains of the Western Cape: rare does not mean safe. Overall, 38 % of the country was hit at least once.

The two charts turn this history into annual exceedance figures that risk and asset managers can use directly. Each year about 1,000 fires exceed 1,000 ha, about one exceeds 25,000 ha, and around ten have a p80 spread rate above 0.4 km/h. Applied to a site, a power line or a whole portfolio, the same method gives local fire frequency, intensity and likely spread rates to support siting, mitigation and insurance decisions.

Feasibility demonstration based on MODIS satellite data; not yet validated against mapped burned areas. Open the full-size image.

Example: following the Freches e Torres fire, Portugal, 15 August 2025

This is a view of the IGNIS SPECULA system. We show here the time explorer on 15 August 2025, over north-west Iberia. We start at 18:00 UTC and run the scans back to 06:30, one 10-minute scan per frame. Then we go forward in time and zoom onto the Freches e Torres fire. From about ×19, the NIR 2.2 µm boxes at 500 m appear, and at maximum zoom (×40) we click the event to open its information box.

The box shows the FRP and rate-of-spread time series and a fire characteristics chart. The chart plots heat per unit area against the hourly head-fire rate of spread, with one point per hour, and has lines at 100, 500 and 1000 BTU/ft/s. Every new scan updates it and places the fire in an intensity class.

Finally the view backs off and we keep running to 18:00. Avelãs de Ambom e Rocamondo ignites to the south-east and makes a fast run: up to 3.3 km/h, with an FRP peak of 11.6 GW.