CHRIS: Seeing Wildfire Progression in Real-time
- Hanna Wellenberg
- 21 hours ago
- 3 min read
Wildfires are a dynamic event. What responders see on the ground can change minute by minute, sometimes second by second. A fire that appears contained can quickly shift direction, intensify, or split into multiple fronts due to wind, terrain or fuel availability.
Understanding how a wildfire is progressing over time is just as important as knowing where it started. Yet during wildfires and other live incidents, teams often rely on fragmented observations, delayed updates, or static maps that do not reflect the current situation.
This is where CHRIS comes in.
CHRIS enables teams to visualise wildfire progression in near real-time by continuously updating fire perimeters based on aerial data. Instead of working with a single snapshot, decision-makers gain a living picture of how the fire evolves.
The Limits of Manual Wildfire Mapping
In many operations, wildfire perimeters are still drawn manually from live drone feeds. This provides useful initial situational context, but only for that specific moment. Especially when what you see in a drone feed is very limited to literally what the drone sees at that exact moment (image below), not a bird's-eye view of the wildfire.
The challenge is speed: the fire keeps moving, while the manually drawn perimeter quickly becomes outdated. In complex incidents with multiple fronts and hotspots, this creates blind spots and forces teams to act on partial information.
As a result, teams are frequently forced to make decisions based on partial or outdated information.
From Snapshots into Wildfire Progression
CHRIS is designed to address this exact challenge.
Instead of relying on a single, manually drawn snapshot, CHRIS converts aerial imagery into georeferenced fire polygons that can be updated continuously. This makes it possible to visualise not only where the wildfire is, but how it is progressing over time.
Rather than asking "Where is the fire now?", teams can answer a more important question: "How is the fire evolving?"
Visualising Wildfire Progression with CHRIS
Besides showcasing the hotspots of a wildfire, CHRIS can also show you the progression of a wildfire. This is done by combining multiple images into a single map.
The image above shows how CHRIS visualises wildfire development by stacking fire polygons from different moments in time. Instead of displaying only the most recent perimeter, CHRIS allows several wildfire layers to be shown simultaneously within the same map view. Each layer, represented by a different colour, reflects the fire perimeter at a specific moment.
By layering these polygons, CHRIS makes the development of the fire immediately visible within a single image.
This approach allows teams to instantly compare where the fire was and where it is now, without swithing between maps, having to do this manually or relying on memory. The result is a clear and spatially accurate overview of how the wildfire is evolving.
With this layered view, teams can quickly identify:
How quickly is the fire spreading?
In which direction is the fire front moving?
Where new hotspots have emerged?
Which areas are increasingly at risk?
Instead of interpreting live video feeds or manually comparing separate images, responders gain a clear, map-based understanding of wildfire progression.
From Position to Progression
Seeing where the fire is matters. Understanding how it moves can change everything.
By visualising wildfire progression over time, CHRIS helps incident commanders and response teams recognise patterns earlier, anticipate fire spread, and make faster, better-informed operational decisions. Instead of relying on fragmented observations or static maps, teams gain a clear and continuously updated overview of how the situation is evolving.
If you would like to see how real-time wildfire progression can support your operations, our team would be happy to show you.
Talk to our wildfire mapping experts and discover how CHRIS can strengthen situational awareness during dynamic incidents.
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