Fighting fires from space using instant satellite imagery

More than 2,300 hectares of land was scorched on the island of Kythira this summer, according to FireHub, a real-time fire monitoring service provided by the National Observatory of Athens's Natural Disaster Relief Center.

The blaze on Kythira was one of the worst fire disasters this summer. Other big fires this year occurred in eastern Mani, in the southern Peloponnese, where the Kotronas fire burned 1,850 hectares at the beginning of July. Another big one struck the area of Kalyvia, eastern Attica, in late July, followed by a wildfire on the Saronic island of Spetses just days later.

FireHub also measures the extent of damage to burnt areas. According to the service, nearly half the land charred by the Kythira fire was shrubland, while more than a third was agricultural land.

"The rapid mapping of these areas is made possible by spatial resolution...