Data sources and licences
The table lists 16 sources. Several require attribution. Three well-known sources are missing here because their licence prohibits commercial use.
This page is the public version of the internal source documentation. For each source it names the operator, the product supplied, the licence and the attribution duty. No access to samoEKO requires registration with any of these providers; all retrieval runs server-side.
Connected sources
| Source | What is supplied | Licence | Attribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| European Environment Agency (EEA), Air Quality Index | Hourly readings from official monitoring stations and the European Air Quality Index | CC BY 4.0 | mandatory |
| NASA LANCE FIRMS | Active fire detections from VIIRS | NASA open data | requested |
| EFFIS / GWIS, Copernicus EMS (JRC) | Burnt area polygons, fire weather index, Sentinel-3 hotspots | CC BY 4.0 | mandatory |
| NASA EOSDIS GIBS / Worldview | Raster tiles: VIIRS true colour and SWIR, aerosol, TROPOMI NO₂ and SO₂ | NASA open data | requested |
| EUMETSAT, EUMETView | Meteosat true colour, fire temperature, fire radiative power, lightning; Sentinel-3 daily image | EUMETSAT data policy | mandatory |
| ECMWF, CAMS | Particulate matter and fire smoke forecast (CAMS) | Copernicus licence | mandatory |
| Copernicus Sentinel-2, AWS Open Data | Sentinel-2 L2A raw scenes for the 10 m detail image | Copernicus licence | mandatory |
| RainViewer | Precipitation radar as a cross-check on lightning | not stated | mandatory |
| Open-Meteo | Wind at 10 m for the particulate plume (calculation) | CC BY 4.0 | mandatory |
| OpenStreetMap | Country, entity, canton, region and municipality boundaries for all seven countries | ODbL 1.0 | mandatory, share-alike |
| Emerald Network 2024, Council of Europe | Protected areas outside the European Union | CC BY 4.0 | mandatory |
| Natura 2000, EEA | Protected areas in Slovenia and Croatia | EEA reuse policy | source note sufficient |
| ESA WorldCover 2021 v200 | Land cover at 10 m for assigning combustion factors | CC BY 4.0 | mandatory |
| ESA CCI Biomass v7.0 | Above-ground biomass at 100 m including uncertainty | ESA CCI terms | citation required |
| Copernicus DEM GLO-30 | Terrain model at 30 m for slope and aspect | Copernicus licence | mandatory |
| IPCC 2006 Guidelines | Combustion and emission factors for the emission calculation | IPCC guidelines | citation required |
Mandatory attribution
This block appears verbatim in every language version and in the footer of the system. Anyone reusing output from samoEKO carries it along.
Air quality: readings from the official monitoring networks, via the European Environment Agency (EEA). The level for each municipality is calculated by samoEKO.
Wildfire data: EFFIS / GWIS, Copernicus Emergency Management Service, © European Union 1995-2026, CC BY 4.0, modified.
Active fire detections: NASA LANCE FIRMS, part of the NASA Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
Satellite imagery: NASA EOSDIS GIBS/Worldview; Sentinel-5P layers contain modified Copernicus Sentinel data (ESA).
Meteosat layers (true colour, fire temperature, fire radiative power, lightning): © EUMETSAT, obtained via EUMETView.
Sentinel-3 daily image: modified Copernicus Sentinel data (ESA), processed by EUMETSAT, obtained via EUMETView.
Sentinel-2 detail image: modified Copernicus Sentinel data (ESA), provided through the AWS Open Data programme.
Precipitation radar: RainViewer.
Particulate matter and smoke forecast: Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), provided by ECMWF, a model calculation, not a measurement.
Wind for the particulate plume: Open-Meteo, CC BY 4.0.
Administrative boundaries: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0.
Protected areas: Emerald Network (Council of Europe) and Natura 2000 (EEA), CC BY 4.0.
Land cover: ESA WorldCover 2021 v200, CC BY 4.0.
Biomass: ESA CCI Biomass v7.0, Santoro, M.; Cartus, O. (2025), doi:10.5285/6429d1aafe1e43b9b414e4a5a7f8b903.
Terrain: Copernicus DEM GLO-30, © DLR e.V. / Airbus Defence and Space.
Emission estimates following the IPCC 2006 Guidelines, volume 4, chapters 2 and 4.
Marking of modification
The Creative Commons Attribution licence requires the source to be named and an indication that the data has been changed. samoEKO converts the fire weather index into its own danger classes, aggregates burnt area polygons into headline figures and intersects detections with administrative boundaries, the addition “modified” is therefore mandatory, not a courtesy.
Logos and names are explicitly excluded from the licence. The marks of Copernicus, EFFIS, GWIS, ESA, EUMETSAT and NASA are not used in samoEKO; attribution is given as plain text.
How the data is retrieved
All external retrieval runs server-side only; the application in the browser reads solely from the system's own database and through its own tile route. There are two reasons. First, the access key for the detections sits in the URL path and would be visible in a browser request, third-party use would consume the shared quota. Second, this keeps the situation picture independent of the internet connectivity of the server it runs on.
Every retrieval run leaves a log record, including the failed ones. If a source drops out, the map shows a hole and states the age of the last successful observation alongside, never an older number under a newer timestamp.
Examined and not used
Three well-known sources are absent deliberately. The reason belongs here so that nobody assumes they were overlooked.
- GADM 4.1, administrative boundaries
- The licence permits academic and non-commercial use and prohibits redistribution and commercial use without prior permission. samoEKO is a product of samoLabs; GADM could therefore neither be shipped nor shown on a map. Technically it would be outdated anyway: Slovenia with 192 instead of 212 municipalities, Montenegro with 21 instead of 25, Kosovo with 30 instead of 38; North Macedonia has no second administrative level at all, and in the first, Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa appear as separate units.
- WDPA / Protected Planet: protected areas
- The licence prohibits commercial use without prior written permission. “Commercial use” is defined as any use by or on behalf of a for-profit organisation, which applies to samoEKO in full. The Council of Europe's Emerald Network together with Natura 2000 from the European Environment Agency covers all seven countries of the working area and replaces WDPA entirely.
- Sentinel-2 cloudless (EOX): cloud-free mosaic
- The service is reachable without a key but states in its own capabilities that it is under a non-commercial share-alike licence. An annual mosaic would in any case have said nothing about the severity of a fire today. samoEKO instead uses the Sentinel-2 raw scenes from the AWS Open Data programme and cuts the tiles itself.
samoEKO is a brand of samoLabs, Juelich.