USA: Follow national wildfire information in the palm of your hand: GeoMAC goes mobile

The public can now access information about active wildfires across the country using a smartphone.

The newly designed GeoMAC, a near real-time web mapping service hosted by the U.S. Geological Survey, is now available through any web browser compatible with mobile devices.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, 36,689 wildfires have burned 4,151,098 acres in the conterminous U.S. since January 1, 2018.*

“The newly mobile-optimized GeoMAC is easy to use on a smartphone and should be an excellent addition to the valuable information GeoMAC provides to fire coordination personnel, firefighters, the press and the public,” said Randall Schumann, Associate Director of the USGS Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center, which manages the GeoMAC project.

GeoMAC was created nearly 20 years ago to give fire managers near real-time information about spreading wildfires, allowing them to make more effective decisions about where to deploy firefighting resources.

Fire perimeter data is updated daily based upon input from incident intelligence sources, GPS data, and infrared (IR) imagery from fixed wing and satellite platforms. The GeoMAC web mapping service allows users in remote locations to manipulate map information displays, zoom in and out to display fire information at various scales and levels of detail, and print hard-copy maps for use in fire-information and media briefings and by dispatch offices and coordination centers. GeoMAC also provides automated data feeds that other mapping applications use to display wildfire perimeter data.