The data that feeds the
hazards.

Layers are global derived data products that Petrel builds to power our hazard models. We open them up for the broader community — fire scientists, climate researchers, geospatial engineers — under CC-BY-NC-4.0 with free account signup. Commercial use is available on request.

Every Layer ships with a model card, methodology document, source provenance, validation report, and citation. Distribution is via the Petrel API — global 90 m GeoTIFFs, signed S3 URLs, rate-limited per account tier.

Live

Global FM40 fuel families — ESA WorldCover × Köppen, native ~270 m

FUEFire driversv1.0 · 2026-08

Fuel Layer

What fuels a surface fire — the Scott & Burgan FM40 fuel-model class, assigned deterministically from land cover × climate (grass, shrub, timber-litter, timber-understory, non-burnable). Feeds the Petrel Wildfire Hazard (Cell2Fire) and works standalone for fuels mapping. v1.0 replaces the earlier CC-BY-NC ML fuel line — a single-class, commercial-clean crosswalk under CC-BY-4.0.

Method · Deterministic FM40 crosswalk: land cover × Köppen climate → Scott & Burgan fuel-model class

Inputs · ESA WorldCover 2021 land cover, Beck Köppen-Geiger climate — both permissive, so the derived Layer is CC-BY-4.0 (commercial use permitted)

Ships · 1 global ~270 m GeoTIFF: the Scott & Burgan FM40 surface fuel-model class per cell (categorical), for Cell2Fire and fire-behavior work

Open layer

Anthropic · lightning · total — global composite at native 0.05°

IGNFire driversv0.3 · 2026-09

Ignition Layer

Where fires start: human-context ignition susceptibility (captures the wildland-urban-interface hump — peaks rural/exurban, falls in fuel-less urban cores) plus a lightning ignition index, combined into a relative total propensity. Feeds the Petrel Wildfire pipeline. v0.3 corrects the lightning band: through v0.2 it was labelled events/km²/yr and documented as a physical rate, but its absolute level was set by a clip in the conversion step — integrated over land it implied roughly 2,300× the real-world number of lightning ignitions per year. It now ships as an explicit 0–1 relative index. The spatial pattern is unchanged, and the total band is unchanged to within rounding; an absolute rate calibration is a v1.0 item. v0.2 had replaced the v0.1 combine step: lightning is converted to a probability (1 − e^(−l/l₀)) rather than normalised and clipped, which had pinned 2.26% of land at a single indistinguishable value. The l₀ scale is provisional — the independent check reported at that release was withdrawn after a defect was found in the simulations behind it.

Method · Gradient-boosted anthropic ignition model + LIS/OTD lightning climatology

Inputs · GHSL R2023A (population, built-up, settlement), HYDE 3.3 cropland/grazing, NASA LIS/OTD flash climatology, Beck 2018 Köppen-Geiger

Ships · 3 global ~5 km (0.05°) GeoTIFF layers: anthropic ignition susceptibility, a lightning ignition relative index, and a combined total propensity

Open layer

Global P/PET aridity index — 85-year ERA5 climatology, native 0.25°

ARIClimatologyv0.1 · 2026-07

Aridity Index

The UNEP aridity index (P/PET) from 85 years of ERA5 climatology — hyper-arid through humid on one dimensionless scale, with a per-pixel confidence interval. A byproduct of the drought v2 hazard chain, shipped at honest ERA5-native resolution. The whole bundle is ~2 MB.

Method · UNEP P/PET aridity index from the drought v2 climate chain (Thornthwaite PET)

Inputs · ERA5 monthly precipitation + 2m temperature 1940-2024 (85-year climatology)

Ships · 3 global ~0.25° (ERA5-native) GeoTIFF layers: P/PET aridity index, UNEP aridity class, and a 90% CI half-width

Open layer

Distance to nearest drainage channel — DEM-derived, global 278 m

FLWHydrologyv0.1 · 2026-07

Flow Accumulation

A free drainage dataset for the community: distance-to-drainage and TWI, built entirely from the open Copernicus DEM — so it reaches your stack with no copyleft strings or flow-down obligations (CC-BY-NC). The same layers feed the Petrel landslide, soil-erosion, flood, and lahar chains. v0.1 is structurally validated (qualitative) — the quantitative HydroRIVERS benchmark lands with v1.

Method · pysheds fill → flow direction → accumulation on the Copernicus DEM; channels at an accumulation threshold, Euclidean distance + TWI derived per cell

Inputs · Copernicus GLO-30 DEM — a single permissive input (clean-room HydroSHEDS/HydroRIVERS replacement, no copyleft flow-down)

Ships · 2 global 278 m GeoTIFF layers: distance to nearest drainage channel (m) and topographic wetness index (TWI)

Open layer

Roadmap

Layers we plan to release as the hazard catalog expands. Each answers a covariate or input gap the team has hit while building a downstream hazard.

How to access

1. Create a free Petrel account — email verification only, no card required.
2. Generate an API key from your account settings.
3. Hit the Layer endpoint: GET /v1/layer/<name>/<vintage>/bundle — returns a 1-hour signed download URL.
4. See the API documentation for code samples in curl, Python, and R.

License: CC-BY-NC-4.0. Free for academic, research, and other non-commercial use. For commercial licensing, contact petreldata.io@gmail.com.