- Where can I see wildfire risk for British Columbia?
- EarthShed shows daily fire-weather conditions for every 5 km of British Columbia on a free map at earthshed.ca/map. Colour is relative FWI within the published issue, not an official danger class. Hexagons visualize the locked 5 km cells; they do not get finer as you zoom.
- How do I check the wildfire risk for my property or address in BC?
- Sign in to EarthShed and search the address. You get the current IGNIS fire-weather reading for the 5 km cell containing it: weather, FWI components, within-issue percentile and relative band, issue freshness and explicit limits. Nearby incidents and smoke air quality remain on the map. The smallest modelled unit is a 5 km cell: this is a location reading, not a property-level assessment.
- Does EarthShed use machine learning to predict wildfire risk?
- Yes. EarthShed is powered by the INFERNIS engine. IGNIS provides daily fire-weather conditions on a 5 km British Columbia land grid: forecast weather, the seven Canadian FWI components, raw FWI, a within-issue FWI percentile and relative band, freshness, sources and limits. It is not an ignition probability, official danger class, live observation or property assessment.
- Is the EarthShed risk score a probability that a fire will start?
- No. IGNIS reports a within-issue FWI percentile and relative band so you can compare places on the same published issue. That is not a calibrated probability of ignition and not a prediction that a fire will or will not occur. Compare places by their relative position, not by reading a band as a percentage chance.
- Where are the active wildfires in BC right now?
- EarthShed shows active incidents published by the BC Wildfire Service, including stage of control, hectares burned and cause. The BC Wildfire Service remains the authoritative source, and EarthShed links to their page for every incident.
- Where does EarthShed wildfire data come from?
- Open government and scientific sources only. Weather and forecasts from Environment and Climate Change Canada, fuel typing and the fire weather reference implementation from Natural Resources Canada, land cover, forest inventory, biogeoclimatic zones and 180,329 dated wildfire incident records since 1950 from the Government of British Columbia, vegetation condition from NASA and Copernicus, and terrain from Canada national digital elevation model. Every source is public and citable.
- Is the BC wildfire risk map free?
- Yes. The wildfire risk map is free to read with no account. A free account adds smoke air quality, live BC Wildfire Service incidents, a detailed reading for any location, and a rate-limited IGNIS API key.
- Is there a wildfire risk API for British Columbia?
- Yes. EarthShed provisions API keys that call IGNIS through api.earthshed.ca. A free account gets a user-level daily quota of 50 calls for GET /v1/ignis/point/{lat}/{lon}, returning the full current IGNIS contract wrapped as { data }. Relative bands compare FWI within one published issue. They are not ignition probabilities or official danger classes.
- What does EarthShed offer beyond the free wildfire map?
- EarthShed is environmental risk intelligence for British Columbia. The IGNIS fire-weather map is free. EMBER screens a property for wildfire and CREST screens it for flood, for insurers and lenders who need to understand physical risk at the address. They are in early access for companies rather than individual visitors. A free account already includes a rate-limited IGNIS API key.
- Is EarthShed an emergency service?
- No. EarthShed is an information product and must never be used as an emergency service. It does not issue evacuation orders or alerts. In an emergency call 911, and follow EmergencyInfoBC and the BC Wildfire Service for orders and alerts.