Overview
Thermal Escalation turns FIRMS/VIIRS hotspot detections into clustered, baseline-aware watch items for thethermal-escalation panel. The implementation lives in scripts/lib/thermal-escalation.mjs.
Clustering
Detections are sorted by observation time and grouped by region label. A detection joins the nearest existing cluster in the same region when it falls within20km; otherwise it starts a new cluster. Cluster centroids are updated incrementally as detections are added.
Each cluster is assigned to a 0.5-degree baseline cell by rounding latitude and longitude to the nearest 0.5 degrees.
Baseline and Persistence
The scorer keeps 30 days of cell history and uses the last 7 days as the comparison baseline. For each cluster it computes:| Metric | Meaning |
|---|---|
baselineExpectedCount | Average prior observation count in the cell |
baselineExpectedFrp | Average prior total fire radiative power in the cell |
countDelta | Current observation count minus baseline count |
frpDelta | Current total FRP minus baseline FRP |
zScore | Count delta divided by baseline count standard deviation |
persistenceHours | Duration since the first current or recent prior observation |
Status Rules
| Status | Rule |
|---|---|
persistent | persistenceHours >= 12 and either countDelta >= 3 or totalFrp >= 80 |
spike | zScore >= 2.5, countDelta >= 6, frpDelta >= 120, or observationCount >= 8 with totalFrp >= 150 |
elevated | zScore >= 1.5, countDelta >= 3, frpDelta >= 50, or no baseline with observationCount >= 5 |
normal | None of the above |
Context and Relevance
Conflict adjacency is determined from the cluster’s region label, not from a live distance join against conflict events. The current conflict-region allowlist is: Ukraine, Russia, Israel/Gaza, Syria, Iran, Taiwan, North Korea, Yemen, Myanmar, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Iraq, and Pakistan. Strategic relevance is assigned as:| Relevance | Rule |
|---|---|
high | Conflict-adjacent and status is spike or persistent |
medium | Status is persistent, total FRP is at least 120, or persistence is at least 12 hours |
low | None of the above |
nearbyAssets is emitted as an empty array until an asset matcher is wired into the seeder.
Confidence
| Confidence | Rule |
|---|---|
high | At least 8 observations, at least 2 unique satellite sources, and at least 4 baseline samples |
medium | At least 4 observations and at least 2 baseline samples |
low | Anything below the medium threshold |