Wildfire management agencies increasingly need to use wildfire simulators at landscape scale for real-time applications such as short-term fire prediction and fire management. Despite the large number of wildfire simulators developed and validated in the last years, a number of drawbacks which limit their applicability can be observed. Both physical models and quasi-empirical models suffer of a number of simplification regarding the chemistry and physics involved in the propagation. In addition, physical and quasi-physical models are in most cases several orders of magnitude slower than real-time, thus limiting their use for operational purposes. Quasi-empirical models showed clear advantages respect to physical and quasi-physical models, since they use both a structure that attempt to reproduce the physical processes involved in wildland fire, and a statistical parameterization based on experimental data, collected from actual wildfires and laboratory experiments, even though they are highly dependent on the conditions in which the fire data were collected and analyzed. In addition, they need a lower computational effort respect to the physical approach. A simulation technique is used in order to obtain a spatially explicit representation of the propagation. Several works proposed different fire simulation techniques to reduce the computational effort without decreases in accuracy (cellular automata and level-set). Moreover, some of these techniques are suitable as they provide a gain in computational time when using parallel computing techniques.The aim of this work is to develop a wildfire simulator specifically designed in order to be used by the wildfire management agencies. The simulator is mainly composed by four components. (1) A mass-consistent model to estimate the wind field using as initial conditions the data provided by the WRF mesoscale meteorological model, (2) the fire spread model of Rothermel, (3) a simulation technique based on the level-set approach, and (4) a graphical user interface based on the Google Maps Application Programming Interface. Some sub-codes of the simulator were designed to be portable to parallel computing environments. The validation activities performed at different temporal and spatial scales confirmed the efficacy of wildfire simulator as tool in wildfire analysis and management. The wind field obtained by the mass-consistent model nested with the meteorological model provided an increase in simulation accuracy respect to the use of wind speed and direction measured by nearby weather stations. The availability of accurate custom fuel models maps is a critical factor in wildfire spread and behavior prediction that need to be addressed, especially at regional scale.
A web-based wildfire simulator for operational applications
Bachisio Arca;Marcello Casula;Grazia Pellizzaro;Pierpaolo Duce
2015
Abstract
Wildfire management agencies increasingly need to use wildfire simulators at landscape scale for real-time applications such as short-term fire prediction and fire management. Despite the large number of wildfire simulators developed and validated in the last years, a number of drawbacks which limit their applicability can be observed. Both physical models and quasi-empirical models suffer of a number of simplification regarding the chemistry and physics involved in the propagation. In addition, physical and quasi-physical models are in most cases several orders of magnitude slower than real-time, thus limiting their use for operational purposes. Quasi-empirical models showed clear advantages respect to physical and quasi-physical models, since they use both a structure that attempt to reproduce the physical processes involved in wildland fire, and a statistical parameterization based on experimental data, collected from actual wildfires and laboratory experiments, even though they are highly dependent on the conditions in which the fire data were collected and analyzed. In addition, they need a lower computational effort respect to the physical approach. A simulation technique is used in order to obtain a spatially explicit representation of the propagation. Several works proposed different fire simulation techniques to reduce the computational effort without decreases in accuracy (cellular automata and level-set). Moreover, some of these techniques are suitable as they provide a gain in computational time when using parallel computing techniques.The aim of this work is to develop a wildfire simulator specifically designed in order to be used by the wildfire management agencies. The simulator is mainly composed by four components. (1) A mass-consistent model to estimate the wind field using as initial conditions the data provided by the WRF mesoscale meteorological model, (2) the fire spread model of Rothermel, (3) a simulation technique based on the level-set approach, and (4) a graphical user interface based on the Google Maps Application Programming Interface. Some sub-codes of the simulator were designed to be portable to parallel computing environments. The validation activities performed at different temporal and spatial scales confirmed the efficacy of wildfire simulator as tool in wildfire analysis and management. The wind field obtained by the mass-consistent model nested with the meteorological model provided an increase in simulation accuracy respect to the use of wind speed and direction measured by nearby weather stations. The availability of accurate custom fuel models maps is a critical factor in wildfire spread and behavior prediction that need to be addressed, especially at regional scale.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
