The objective of this project is to develop a complete, multi-scale approach to the mathematical modelling of forest fire spread and control. We will consider information such as fuel type, moisture and wind and weather conditions and will use local information to compute a rate of spread (ROS) of the fire front.
Dr. Thomas Hillen, University of Alberta
Each year, thousands of forest fires burn in Canada, consuming millions of hectares. Although important for the health of a forest ecosystem, fires threaten native species and human life and property. It is therefore important that the fire management community have access to decision support tools to help fight and manage forest fires. The objective of this project is to develop a complete, multi-scale approach to the mathematical modelling of forest fire spread and control. We will consider information such as fuel type, moisture and wind and weather conditions and will use local information to compute a rate of spread (ROS) of the fire front. On the macroscopic level we will use the level set method to describe the evolution of the fire front and reaction-advection-diffusion equations for the energy release rate and for the temperature distribution.