Apira – Terms of Use

1.1 These Terms of Use apply to your use of Apira: the Apira app for Android and iOS, and the Apira web app at app.apira.eu.

1.2 Apira is provided by: Iosif Koutsoumpidis, trading as “APIRA”, Urbacher Weg 82C, 51149 Köln, Germany. Email hello@apira.eu. In these terms, “we” and “us” means this provider. Full details are in our legal notice: https://app.apira.eu/legal/impressum/.

1.3 These terms are for private users. Organisations that publish incidents in Apira’s admin panel also accept the Terms for organisations. Until an organisation has accepted them, sections 5, 6 and 11 of these terms also apply to its use of the admin panel.

2.1 Apira is a free information service run by a private business. It shows information about wildfires on a map, with a focus on Greece. It can notify you when something is detected near places you have saved, or near your last known location. Apira shows:

• Satellite heat detections from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), for Greece and the rest of Europe. These are spots where a satellite measured unusual heat.
• Burnt areas from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service.
• Civil Protection posts: public posts of the @112Greece account on X, which Apira retrieves and displays. Apira places the areas named in these posts on the map automatically.
• Incidents: information published by organisations registered with Apira. Each incident shows the name of the organisation that published it.

Civil Protection posts and incidents relate to Greece.

2.2 You can save places and choose a notification radius. If you turn on “Location” (in Profile or with the locate button on the map) and allow location access, Apira shows your position on the map and uses your last known location for alerts (see our Privacy Policy).

2.3 What Apira does not do. Apira:

• does not issue warnings, evacuation orders or other official instructions;
• does not send emergency services;
• does not monitor your safety.

Apira shows information from other sources, and it works automatically. Nobody at Apira reviews each item before it is shown or sent.

Apira is not an official warning service.

Apira is not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting for:

• 112 Greece, the General Secretariat for Civil Protection or the Hellenic Fire Service;
• NASA, the European Commission (Joint Research Centre / Copernicus) or X;
• any other authority in Greece, Germany or elsewhere.

In an emergency, call 112. Do not wait for a fire to show up in Apira. Always follow instructions from the authorities and emergency services. They come before anything Apira shows.

Keep the official emergency alerts on your phone switched on. Use Apira in addition to official channels, never instead of them.

We cannot guarantee that every fire is detected, shown or notified, or that the information is current, complete or in the right place. In particular:

• Satellite detections arrive late and are uncertain.
  • Each satellite passes over Greece only a few times a day.
  • Detections often arrive up to about three hours after the satellite passes, sometimes later.
  • Cloud or smoke can hide a fire.
  • A detection only means unusual heat somewhere within roughly 375 m to 1 km of the point. It is not a confirmed fire. It can come from industrial or agricultural heat (a “false positive”).
• Civil Protection posts reach Apira with a delay. We check for new @112Greece posts every few minutes, and only once they are published on X. Not every post is shown or notified.
• The map positions of areas named in 112 posts are estimated automatically. AI-based software and a geocoding service work them out from place names. They can be wrong or incomplete. If a place cannot be located, you may get no alert for it. The original post, linked in the app, is what counts.
• The organisation that published an incident is responsible for it (see section 6).
• Your “last known location” can be out of date. It only updates while Apira is open.
• Notifications can arrive late or not at all. Reasons include:
  • your device settings: notifications, battery saving, location, flight mode;
  • mobile coverage;
  • outages at Google, Apple, Expo, our hosting provider or the data sources;
  • maintenance or errors on our side.

4.1 Contract. The contract between you and us is formed when you register and accept these terms (section 4.2). We activate your account once you confirm your email address.

4.2 How the contract is concluded.

1. In the app or the web app, tap “Register” and enter your name, your email address and a password.
2. Check your entries. You can correct them in the input fields at any time before you tap “Register”.
3. Tap “Register”. By tapping it, you accept these Terms of Use. We confirm receipt by sending you an email with a verification link. Your account is activated when you confirm your email address.

You can view and save the current version of these terms at any time at https://app.apira.eu/legal/terms/. If you notice a mistake in your name or email address after registering, write to hello@apira.eu and we will correct it. The contract language is English; any translation of these terms is for convenience only. We have not subscribed to any code of conduct.

4.3 Price. Apira is free. Your mobile provider may charge you for data.

4.4 Minimum age. You must be at least 16 years old. If you are under 18, you confirm that your parent or guardian agrees to you using Apira.

4.5 Your account.

• Use a valid email address that you control.
• Keep your password secret.
• Tell us at hello@apira.eu if you think someone else is using your account.
• One account per person.

4.6 What you need.

• an internet connection;
• a supported version of Android or iOS, or a current web browser;
• notification permission, for notifications;
• location permission and the “Location” setting, for alerts near you.

When you use Apira, you must not:

• use it in a way that breaks the law or infringes other people’s rights;
• overload or disrupt Apira, or get around its security or rate limits;
• read or copy Apira’s own content or the Apira service automatically (scraping, bots), or use Apira’s own content for a commercial service, without our written consent. For third-party content, section 8.1 applies;
• reverse-engineer the app, unless the law allows it;
• pretend to be someone else, or give false information when you register.

6.1 Third-party content. Civil Protection posts, satellite data and burnt areas come from the sources named in section 2. We display them, mostly unchanged, and place them on the map. They are not our own statements. We show posts by @112Greece as they were published on X, with a link to the original. Notifications may contain shortened and reformatted excerpts (for example without links, mentions or hashtag symbols).

6.2 Incidents from organisations.

• Organisations registered with Apira publish incidents in our admin panel, under their own name and on their own responsibility.
• We only check incidents technically, for example that they can be shown on the map. We do not check their content before they are published.

6.3 How we moderate.

• We may remove or restrict an incident, or suspend an organisation’s access, if the content is illegal or breaks the Terms for organisations.
• People at Apira make these decisions. We do not use automated moderation.
• We tell the organisation concerned and give our reasons, including how it can challenge the decision.

6.4 Reporting content.

• Anyone can report content they think is illegal to hello@apira.eu.
• In the app, you can also tap “Report” in an incident’s view to report an incident that you think is illegal, misleading or offensive.
• When you report by email, please include:
  • why you think the content is illegal;
  • exactly where it is (incident title, date, link);
  • your name and email address (not needed for certain criminal offences);
  • a statement that, as far as you know, your report is accurate and complete.
• We confirm that we received your report, decide promptly, carefully and objectively, and tell you our decision, the reasons, and how you can challenge it, including by going to court. We do not use automated tools to decide on reports.
• How we process your data when you report: Privacy Policy, section 4.12.

6.5 Contact point. Our single point of contact for users and authorities under Art. 11 and 12 of the Digital Services Act is hello@apira.eu. We communicate in German, English and Greek.

7.1 Apira uses data from NASA FIRMS, from EFFIS (© European Union, licensed under CC BY 4.0) and from X, under each source’s licence.

7.2 Apira includes Google Maps features and content. Your use of them is subject to:

• the current Google Maps/Google Earth Additional Terms of Service: https://maps.google.com/help/terms_maps/
• the Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

7.3 You download the app from Google Play or the App Store, and the store’s terms apply to the download. Google and Apple are not parties to this contract. They are not responsible for Apira or for support.

8.1 The app, its design and its own content belong to us or our licensors. Third-party content still belongs to its owners and remains subject to its own licences (for example, EFFIS data under CC BY 4.0). Nothing in these terms limits the rights you have under those licences.

8.2 We give you a free, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use Apira for personal purposes in line with these terms. We can withdraw this right under section 11.

9.1 We try to keep Apira available at all times, but we do not promise that it will never be interrupted. Maintenance, technical faults and outages at our providers or data sources can cause interruptions.

9.2 We may change Apira’s features only for a valid reason, in particular:

• a data source stops, changes, or changes its terms;
• the law, a court or an authority requires it;
• we need to fix a security problem;
• technical developments require it, for example new versions of Android or iOS.

We keep Apira’s core function: a wildfire map with alerts for your saved places. Every change must be reasonable for you, taking your interests into account. We announce changes that significantly affect how you use Apira at least 6 weeks in advance, in the app or by email, unless a data source, the law or a security problem leaves us less time. You can delete your account at any time, free of charge.

10.1 We are liable without limit:

• for damage caused intentionally or through gross negligence;
• for injury to life, body or health;
• under the German Product Liability Act (Produkthaftungsgesetz);
• where we have given a guarantee.

10.2 For slight negligence, we are only liable if we breach an essential contractual obligation. This means an obligation that must be met for the contract to be carried out properly at all, and that you can normally rely on. In that case, our liability is limited to the damage that is typical for this kind of contract and could be foreseen when the contract was made.

10.3 In all other cases, we are not liable for slight negligence.

10.4 These rules also apply to the personal liability of our employees, representatives and agents.

10.5 Mandatory legal provisions are not affected.

11.1 By you. You can end the contract at any time by deleting your account, in the app or as described at https://app.apira.eu/legal/delete-account/.

11.2 By us, with notice. We can end the contract by email with two weeks’ notice, for example if we shut Apira down.

11.3 By us, for good cause. We can end the contract or suspend your account without notice if there is good cause, especially serious or repeated breaches of section 5. Where reasonable, we warn you first. We always give our reasons for a suspension or termination.

12.1 We may change these terms when there is a valid reason, such as new features, changes in the law or changes at our data sources.

12.2 We tell you about changes at least 6 weeks before they take effect, in the app and by email, and explain what is changing.

12.3 We will ask you to accept the new terms in the app or by email. We do not treat silence or continued use as acceptance.

12.4 If you do not accept, you can delete your account at any time, free of charge. We may then end the contract under section 11.2.

12.5 Changes required by law, or changes that only benefit you, may take effect sooner.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we process personal data.

We are not willing and not obliged to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board (§ 36 of the German Consumer Dispute Resolution Act, VSBG).

15.1 German law governs these terms. The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

15.2 If you are a consumer and you normally live in another country, such as Greece, you keep the protection of that country’s mandatory consumer law (Art. 6(2) Rome I Regulation).

15.3 If you are a consumer in the EU:

• you can take legal action against us in the courts of the country where you live, or in Germany;
• we can only take legal action against you in the courts of the country where you live (Art. 18 Brussels Ia Regulation).

15.4 If you are a merchant, a public-law legal entity or a public-law special fund, the place of jurisdiction is Cologne.

16.1 These terms are published in English. The English version is binding; any translation is for convenience only.

16.2 If any part of these terms is invalid, the rest stays valid. The statutory rules apply in place of the invalid part (§ 306 BGB).

16.3 Contact: hello@apira.eu · +49 1522 1347101 · Urbacher Weg 82C, 51149 Köln.