Live Dispatches

A risk score is a long-term view; dispatches are the short-term one. The dispatch radar surfaces hazard events happening right now around a location, drawn on a directional plot so you can read bearing and distance at a glance.

Where to find it

Open any location and switch to the Outlook tab. The Nearby dispatches panel sits below the headline, showing events within a configurable radius (50-500 km, defaulting to whichever range first contains live activity).

Dispatches are evaluated per location, not globally; the home location is the centre of the radar.

The radar plot

The plot is a compass-oriented polar chart:

Centre: the home location.
Concentric rings: distance in kilometres. Range presets are 50, 100, 250, and 500 km.
Angle: bearing from the home location, with N / NE / E / SE / S / SW / W / NW labels around the perimeter.
Dot: one hazard event, coloured by type, sized by severity, and faded by age (recent events are more opaque, older ones gradually disappear).
Sweep hand: a slowly rotating indicator emphasising that the panel is live.

Click any dot to expand its details: reported time, exact position, description, and source provider.

Event types

Eleven event categories are tracked:

Type	Source	Cadence
Wildfire	NASA FIRMS	~15 minutes
Earthquake	GDACS	~1 hour
Flood	GloFAS	~1 hour
Cyclone	GDACS	~1 hour
Volcano	GDACS	~1 hour
Drought	Live drought indices	Daily
Extreme heat	National weather / heat-alert feeds	~15 minutes
Extreme cold	National weather / cold-alert feeds	~15 minutes
Wind	National weather / wind-alert feeds	~15 minutes
Air quality	OpenAQ	~1 hour
Weather alert	NWS (US), MeteoAlarm (EU, push-based)	Real-time / 15m

Each dispatch row in the side panel carries the same fields: type, severity, distance, bearing, reported timestamp, and the source. The source is always shown so you can verify the event in its origin system.

Severity and recency

Severity is normalised across providers into four levels: Critical, High, Moderate, Low. The dot size on the radar reflects severity; the colour reflects the event type.

Recency drives opacity:

Age	Opacity
Last 6 hours	Full opacity (latest)
6-24 hours	Reduced
24-72 hours	Faded
Past 72 hours	Cleared from the radar

This way the radar always shows the current state, with a short trail of the recent past. If an event is no longer relevant, it disappears on its own.

ℹ️ No deep history here

Dispatches are about now. For trend lines (heat days per year, drought-month counts), use the Factors tab on the report or the historical map layers. The radar is intentionally a live view.

Radius and filtering

Radius preset (50 / 100 / 250 / 500 km): hides events outside the selected ring. The default is auto-selected to land on the smallest preset that actually contains activity.
Type filters: click an event-type chip to focus on one category. The filtered count appears next to the chip; toggle again to clear.
“Show all”: resets all filters.

Dispatches vs map layers

Dispatches are not part of the 17 map layers documented in Working with Layers. They are a separate panel showing point events from live feeds, whereas layers visualise pre-aggregated gridded datasets (water stress polygons, ERA5 climate rasters, etc.).

Practical distinction:

Use dispatches when	Use map layers when
You need to know “today”	You need climatology or trends
Bearing and distance matter	Continuous spatial context matters
Operational response	Risk scoring and disclosure

The same location can carry both: an Outlook with a quiet radar and a poor long-term score, or vice versa.

Sources

The radar aggregates the following providers. All are free or open-access feeds:

NASA FIRMS: active wildfire detections
GDACS: earthquakes, cyclones, volcanoes
GloFAS: global flood awareness
OpenAQ: community air-quality measurements
NWS API: US weather alerts
MeteoAlarm: European weather alerts (push-based)

Reading a Report: long-term scoring view for the same location
Working with Layers: historical gridded data on the map
Data Sources: provenance behind every score and layer