Active fires are located on the basis of the so-called 'hotspots' product of MODIS sensor, on board of the TERRA and ACQUA satellites, which identifies areas on the ground that distinctly hotter than their surroundings. The difference in temperature between the areas that are actively burning with respect to neighbor areas allows the identification and mapping of active fires. This module was made available for the first time in 2007, as a means to support the Monitoring and Information Center (MIC) of the European Commission in its activities for coordination of forest fire fighting efforts among the Member States.

Another source for identification of active fires is built through firenews: the news items are selected from a large set of RSS feeds published by various forest fires related sites, and from news feeds filtered out with appropriate keywords. Selected feed's items are then geolocated and published at the EFFIS web site, in the FireNews section.

The mapping of active fires is performed to provide a synoptic view of current fires in Europe and as a means to help the subsequent mapping of burnt fire perimeters. Information on active fires is normally updated daily and, when needed, it is made available in EFFIS within 2-3 hours of the acquisition of the MODIS images.

When interpreting the hotspots displayed in the EFFIS Current Situation application, the following must be considered:

• Hotspot location on the map is only accurate within 1.5 km
• Some fires may be small or obscured by smoke or cloud and remain undetected
• The satellites also detect other heat sources (not all hotspots are fires)

To minimize false alarms and filter out active fires not qualified as wildfires (e.g. agricultural burnings), the system only displays a selected subset of the hotspots detected by the MODIS Rapid Response System. To this end a knowledge based algorithm is applied that takes into account the extent of surrounding land cover categories, the distance to urban areas and artificial surfaces, the confidence level of the hotspot.

With the identify feature tool, key information attached to each active fire is provided such as geographic coordinates, administrative district (commune and province) and the main land cover category affected.