Like @Flyron said Watch Duty is an excellent application with many of the same contributors on here feeding watch duty.
As far as mapping goes, watch duty has access to same data the people on here do. What I would caution you with and for you to get a good understanding of is what the source of the data is.
You mentioned some satellite data like GOES/VIIRS/MODIS. With that comes two sets of resolution the first is Spatial Resolution aka how accurate was it, with a sensor in space looking at pixel radiance for MODIS 1 pixel could be anywhere in 1000 square meters, VIIRS 375 meters so on so forth. So I caution you with using this data alone without understanding it and that these thermal sensors can detect heat in the smoke column which can make you think a fire is much larger than it is sometimes.
The second resolution is temporal resolution aka time - is this a sensor that passes over an area in an orbit over the poles aka polar orbit over a set time or is this a sensor that is in orbit with the earth aka geostationary. All this goes into how fresh or stale the data is depending on how you want to look at it. Also a factor is once it captures the data how long does it take to process it and publish it.
So here is an example, a satellite with a very coarse spatial resolution but fine temporal resolution can let you know you have an ignition in let say 1000 square meter within 2 minutes of detection.
In California we have three crewed aircraft platforms with very high resolution sensors on them that fly over a fire during an initial attack fire.
-
CAL-OES FIRIS Program - Two aircraft one in Sac one in Chino that will fly a fire, map it and transmit it while airborne still over the fire using sat-comms. The data is made available to the public rapidly by a KML network link and arcgis feature service. They can also transmit live goesptatial video for using applications like the Team Awareness Kit. There is a thread on TAK on this website.
-
CAL-FIRE AIR INTEL Program - very similar they have one configured aircraft now but also have sub contractors for when things get busy. They also map the incident while airborne and network willing (not sure if satcomms is done yet) transmit this out for rapid sharing to the public via arcgis feature service. I take that and make it into public KML network link for TAK. I dont think CAL-FIRE is doing live video yet but IIRC that is on the punch list.
-
USFS Firewatch Program - Basically same as the first two but that data is not shared publicly. Now one of these fire permiters might make is as the perimeter to one of their daily published maps.
A federal program called NIROPS does nightly flights and sends these to the incident management teams for mapping. This is high spatial resolution but low temporal resolution, these are not done during initial attack.
My opinion is that watch duty does a pretty good job at providing accurate and timely data to the public to help them make informed decisions. As always follow your local law enforcement on the evacuations etc.