A computational method for optimising fuel treatment locations

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Finney
Keyword(s):  
Fire Spread ◽  
Time Algorithm ◽  
Computational Method ◽  
Fire Growth ◽  
Spread Rate ◽  
Fuel Treatment ◽  
Large Fires ◽  
Random Patterns ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Weather Scenario

Modelling and experiments have suggested that spatial fuel treatment patterns can influence the movement of large fires. On simple theoretical landscapes consisting of two fuel types (treated and untreated), optimal patterns can be analytically derived that disrupt fire growth efficiently (i.e. with less area treated than random patterns). Although conceptually simple, the application of these theories to actual landscapes is made difficult by heterogeneity (fuels, weather, and topography). Here a computational method is described for heterogeneous landscapes that identifies efficient fuel treatment units and patterns for a selected fire weather scenario. The method requires input of two sets of spatial input data: (1) the current fuel conditions; and (2) the potential fuel conditions after a treatment is conducted (if treatment is permitted in a particular location). The contrast in fire spread rate between the two landscapes under the weather scenario conditions indicates where treatments are effective at delaying the growth of fires. Fire growth from the upwind edge of the landscape is then computed using a minimum travel time algorithm. This identifies major fire travel routes (areas needing treatment) and their intersections with the areas where treatments occurred and reduced the spread rate (opportunity for treatment). These zones of treatment ‘need and opportunity’ are iteratively delineated by contiguous patches of raster cells up to a user-supplied constraint on percentage of land area to be treated. This algorithm is demonstrated for simple and for complex landscapes.

Calculation of fire spread rates across random landscapes

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Finney
Keyword(s):  
Travel Time ◽  
Growth Rates ◽  
Fire Spread ◽  
Harmonic Mean ◽  
Fire Growth ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Spread Rate ◽  
Fuel Treatments ◽  
Fuel Mixtures

An approach is presented for approximating the expected spread rate of fires that burn across 2-dimensional landscapes with random fuel patterns. The method calculates a harmonic mean spread rate across a small 2-dimensional grid that allows the fire to move forward and laterally. Within this sample grid, all possible spatial fuel arrangements are enumerated and the spread rate of an elliptical fire moving through the cells is found by searching for the minimum travel time. More columns in the sample grid are required for accurately calculating expected spread rates where very slow-burning fuels are present, because the fire must be allowed to move farther laterally around slow patches. This calculation can be used to estimate fire spread rates across spatial fuel mixtures provided that the fire shape was determined from wind and slope. Results suggest that fire spread rates on random landscapes should increase with fire size and that random locations of fuel treatments would be inefficient in changing overall fire growth rates.

scholarly journals The Impact of Fuel Treatments on Wildfire Behavior in North American Boreal Fuels: A Simulation Study Using FIRETEC

Fire ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ginny Marshall ◽  
Dan Thompson ◽  
Kerry Anderson ◽  
Brian Simpson ◽  
Rodman Linn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Black Spruce ◽  
Treatment Options ◽  
Fire Behavior ◽  
Fire Spread ◽  
Natural Forests ◽  
Spread Rate ◽  
Multiple Components ◽  
In Fire ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Common Tree

Current methods of predicting fire spread in Canadian forests are suited to large wildfires that spread through natural forests. Recently, the use of mechanical and thinning treatments of forests in the wildland-urban interface of Canada has increased. To assist in community wildfire protection planning in forests not covered by existing operational fire spread models, we use FIRETEC to simulate fire spread in lowland black spruce fuel structures, the most common tree stand in Canada. The simulated treatments included the mechanical mulching of strips, and larger, irregularly shaped areas. In all cases, the removal of fuel by mulch strips broke up the fuels, but also caused wind speed increases, so little decrease in fire spread rate was modelled. For large irregular clearings, the fire spread slowly through the mulched wood chips, and large decreases in fire spread and intensity were simulated. Furthermore, some treatments in the black spruce forest were found to be effective in decreasing the distance and/or density of firebrands. The simulations conducted can be used alongside experimental fires and documented wildfires to examine the effectiveness of differing fuel treatment options to alter multiple components of fire behavior.

Climate, lightning ignitions, and fire severity in Yosemite National Park, California, USA

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 765 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Lutz ◽  
Jan W. van Wagtendonk ◽  
Andrea E. Thode ◽  
Jay D. Miller ◽  
Jerry F. Franklin
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
Fire Severity ◽  
Fire Spread ◽  
Yosemite National Park ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Lightning Strikes ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
Area Burned ◽  
Large Fires ◽  
In Fire

Continental-scale studies of western North America have attributed recent increases in annual area burned and fire size to a warming climate, but these studies have focussed on large fires and have left the issues of fire severity and ignition frequency unaddressed. Lightning ignitions, any of which could burn a large area given appropriate conditions for fire spread, could be the first indication of more frequent fire. We examined the relationship between snowpack and the ignition and size of fires that occurred in Yosemite National Park, California (area 3027 km2), between 1984 and 2005. During this period, 1870 fires burned 77 718 ha. Decreased spring snowpack exponentially increased the number of lightning-ignited fires. Snowpack mediated lightning-ignited fires by decreasing the proportion of lightning strikes that caused lightning-ignited fires and through fewer lightning strikes in years with deep snowpack. We also quantified fire severity for the 103 fires >40 ha with satellite fire-severity indices using 23 years of Landsat Thematic Mapper data. The proportion of the landscape that burned at higher severities and the complexity of higher-severity burn patches increased with the log10 of annual area burned. Using one snowpack forecast, we project that the number of lightning-ignited fires will increase 19.1% by 2020 to 2049 and the annual area burned at high severity will increase 21.9%. Climate-induced decreases in snowpack and the concomitant increase in fire severity suggest that existing assumptions may be understated – fires may become more frequent and more severe.

Simulation of long-term landscape-level fuel treatment effects on large wildfires

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Finney ◽  
Rob C. Seli ◽  
Charles W. McHugh ◽  
Alan A. Ager ◽  
Bernhard Bahro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prescribed Burning ◽  
Treatment Strategies ◽  
Dynamics Simulation ◽  
Fire Growth ◽  
Fuel Treatments ◽  
Fuel Treatment ◽  
Blue Mountains ◽  
Fuel Model ◽  
Treatment Optimisation ◽  
Large Fires

A simulation system was developed to explore how fuel treatments placed in topologically random and optimal spatial patterns affect the growth and behaviour of large fires when implemented at different rates over the course of five decades. The system consisted of a forest and fuel dynamics simulation module (Forest Vegetation Simulator, FVS), logic for deriving fuel model dynamics from FVS output, a spatial fuel treatment optimisation program, and a spatial fire growth and behaviour model to evaluate the performance of the treatments in modifying large fire growth. Simulations were performed for three study areas: Sanders County in western Montana, the Stanislaus National Forest in California, and the Blue Mountains in south-eastern Washington. For different spatial treatment strategies, the results illustrated that the rate of fuel treatment (percentage of land area treated per decade) competes against the rates of fuel recovery to determine how fuel treatments contribute to multidecade cumulative impacts on the response variables. Using fuel treatment prescriptions that simulate thinning and prescribed burning, fuel treatment arrangements that are optimal in disrupting the growth of large fires require at least 1 to 2% of the landscape to be treated each year. Randomly arranged units with the same treatment prescriptions require about twice that rate to produce the same fire growth reduction. The results also show that the topological fuel treatment optimisation tends to balance maintenance of previous units with treatment of new units. For example, with 2% landscape treatment annually, fewer than 5% of the units received three or more treatments in five decades with most being treated only once or twice and ~35% remaining untreated after five decades.

Relative importance of weather and climate on wildfire growth in interior Alaska

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 479 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Abatzoglou ◽  
Crystal A. Kolden
Keyword(s):  
Meteorological Data ◽  
Weather Data ◽  
Fire Growth ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Daily Weather Data ◽  
Weather And Climate ◽  
Dry Conditions ◽  
Large Fires ◽  
In Fire

Efforts to quantify relationships between climate and wildfire in Alaska have not yet explored the role of higher-frequency meteorological conditions on individual wildfire ignition and growth. To address this gap, meteorological data for 665 large fires that burned across the Alaskan interior between 1980 and 2007 were assessed to determine the respective influence of higher-frequency weather and lower-frequency climate, in terms of both antecedent and post-ignition conditions on fire growth. Antecedent climate exhibited no discernable influence on eventual fire size. In contrast, fire size was sensitive to weather in the days to weeks following ignition, particularly the post-ignition timing of precipitation. Prolonged periods of warm and dry conditions coincident with blocking that persists for several weeks after ignition enabled growth of large wildfires, whereas the return of wetting precipitation generally within a week after ignition inhibited growth of smaller wildfires. These results suggest that daily weather data are a critical predictor of fire growth and large fire potential and encourage their use in fire management and modelling.

Fire Growth in Grassland Fuels

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 237 ◽  
Author(s):  
NP Cheney ◽  
JS Gould
Keyword(s):  
Wind Speed ◽  
Fire Spread ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Fire Growth ◽  
Spread Rate ◽  
Wind Speeds ◽  
Rate Of Spread ◽  
Steady Rate ◽  
Scale Field ◽  
Wildfire Spread

The development of grass fires originating from both point and line ignitions and burning in both open grasslands and woodlands with a grassy understorey was studied using 487 periods of fire spread and associated fuel, weather and fire-shape observations. The largest fires travelled more than 1000 m from the origin and the fastest 2-minute spread rate was over 2 m s-1. Given continuous fuel of uniform moisture content, the rate of forward spread was related to both the wind speed and the width of the head fire measured normal to the direction of fire travel. The head fire width required to achieve the potential quasi-steady rate of forward spread for the prevailing conditions increased with increasing wind speeds. These findings have important implications for relating small-scale field or laboratory measurements of fire spread to predictions of wildfire spread. The time taken to reach the potential quasi-steady rate of spread at any wind speed was highly variable. This time was strongly influenced by the frequency of changes in wind direction and the rate of development of a wide head fire.

Upward Fire Spread Rate Over Real-Scale EPS ETICS Façades

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biao Zhou ◽  
Hideki Yoshioka ◽  
Takafumi Noguchi ◽  
Kai Wang ◽  
Xinyan Huang
Keyword(s):  
Fire Spread ◽  
Spread Rate ◽  
Real Scale

Characterisation of the fuel and fire environment in southern Ontario’s tallgrass prairie

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (8) ◽  
pp. 1118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Kidnie ◽  
B. Mike Wotton
Keyword(s):  
Moisture Content ◽  
Tallgrass Prairie ◽  
Prescribed Burning ◽  
Fire Spread ◽  
Fuel Load ◽  
Prairie Restoration ◽  
Prescribed Burn ◽  
Spread Rate ◽  
Prescribed Burns ◽  
Tallgrass Prairie Restoration

Prescribed burning can be an integral part of tallgrass prairie restoration and management. Understanding fire behaviour in this fuel is critical to conducting safe and effective prescribed burns. Our goal was to quantify important physical characteristics of southern Ontario’s tallgrass fuel complex prior to and during prescribed burns and synthesise our findings into useful applications for the prescribed fire community. We found that the average fuel load in tallgrass communities was 0.70 kg m–2. Fuel loads varied from 0.38 to 0.96 kg m–2. Average heat of combustion did not vary by species and was 17 334 kJ kg–1. A moisture content model was developed for fully cured, matted field grass, which was found to successfully predict moisture content of the surface layers of cured tallgrass in spring. We observed 25 head fires in spring-season prescribed burns with spread rates ranging from 4 to 55 m min–1. Flame front residence time averaged 27 s, varying significantly with fuel load but not fire spread rate. A grassland spread rate model from Australia showed the closest agreement with observed spread rates. These results provide prescribed-burn practitioners in Ontario better information to plan and deliver successful burns.

scholarly journals Dimensional analysis on forest fuel bed fire spread

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-110
Author(s):  
Jiann C. Yang
Keyword(s):  
Dimensional Analysis ◽  
Fire Spread ◽  
Fuel Particle ◽  
Wind Condition ◽  
Spread Rate ◽  
Fuel Loading ◽  
Rate Of Spread ◽  
Dimensionless Groups ◽  
Dimensionless Correlations ◽  
Fuel Moisture Content

A dimensional analysis was performed to correlate the fuel bed fire rate of spread data previously reported in the literature. Under wind condition, six pertinent dimensionless groups were identified, namely dimensionless fire spread rate, dimensionless fuel particle size, fuel moisture content, dimensionless fuel bed depth or dimensionless fuel loading density, dimensionless wind speed, and angle of inclination of fuel bed. Under no-wind condition, five similar dimensionless groups resulted. Given the uncertainties associated with some of the parameters used to estimate the dimensionless groups, the dimensionless correlations using the resulting dimensionless groups correlate the fire rates of spread reasonably well under wind and no-wind conditions.

Simulation and Modelling in Fire Safety

2020 ◽  
pp. 232-262
Author(s):  
Tomaz Hozjan ◽  
Kamila Kempna ◽  
Jan Smolka
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Fire Safety ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Fire Spread ◽  
Practical Training ◽  
Smoke Movement ◽  
Fire Engineering ◽  
Limited Budget ◽  
Fire Scenarios ◽  
In Fire

Actual and future concerns in fire safety in buildings and infrastructure are challenging. Modern technologies provide rapid development in area of fire safety, especially in education, training, and fire-engineering. Modelling as a tool in fire-engineering provides possibility to design specific fire scenarios and investigate fire spread, smoke movement or evacuation of occupants from buildings. Development of emerging technologies and software provides higher possibility to apply these models with interactions of augmented and virtual reality. Augmented reality and virtual reality expand effectivity of training and preparedness of first (fire wardens) and second (firefighters) responders. Limitations such as financial demands, scale and scenarios of practical training of first and second responders are much lower than in virtual reality. These technologies provide great opportunities in preparedness to crisis in a safety way with significantly limited budget. Some of these systems are already developed and applied in safety and security area e.g. XVR (firefighting, medical service).

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