About
Hazard Tracer is a free app that anyone can use to find hazard events. The app is capable of identifying natural disasters on a global scale. You can read more about our purpose here.
Events
There are two types of events that are separated by the existence of a forecast or the happening of a real event. That is because there is no valid forecast for some events (for example earthquakes cannot be predicted), in contrast to others (like fire alerts) that can predict an event before it becomes massive. Due to this difference of events, Hazard Tracer app has two main event categories, forecasted events and actual events. Events supported are fire alerts (forecasted event), droughts, dust and haze, earthquakes, floods, landslides, severe storms, extreme snow events, extreme temperature, volcanoes and wildfires.
In specific, fire alerts are separated in two main categories, based on medium and high probability. When a fire alert is presented by our application that does not mean that in this spot there is an active fire. It means that satellites have detected a thermal trace that can be a fire. If a particular area has many fire alerts of high probability (red circles), means that in the area it is almost certain that there is an ongoing fire.
All other events have taken place at the location the app provides. Date and time presented is on Greenwich Mean Time time zone (UTC +0). Local date, which is also displayed, is based on the visitor’s browser preferences. Points displayed by our app are events or alerts that have happened during the last day, which means that Hazards Tracer does not keep historical data.
Usage
Using the app to trace events is a very simple task. User has to type the first characters of the desired area and then select the proper location. After that, the app displays all events within 400 km radius of selected location. Events are updating constantly in a 1-hour basis except from fire alerts that are updating in a 3-hour basis.