Landfill fires are becoming a real threat to both people and environment due to lack of predictions and control methods. Processing of the infrared band from level-1 satellite images was employed and decades worth of archived data from USGS Earth Explorer databases were analyzed to obtain surface temperature values of Atlantic Waste Landfill, Virginia and Bridgeton Landfill, Missouri. Multitemporal thermal maps and frequency of maxima analysis maps of these two landfills showed the hotspots spreading through the waste site. A Landfill Fire Index (LFI) was created by investigating eight factors that give information about the hazardousness of the landfill conditions relative to the presence of a fire occurrence. The application of Analytical Hierarchy Method (AHP) resulted in the determination of the degree of importance of each Landfill Fire Index factor. Several monitoring well data sets were used to calculate the LFI for Bridgeton Landfill, Missouri, and Burlington County Landfill, New Jersey
