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April 23-24, 2009
Workshop on Fire Spotting
Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto
33 Willcocks St, Toronto, Ontario
Local Organizers:
David Stanford, Rob Mcalpine, Mike Wotton
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Workshop Description
Mathematical and statistical interest in the modelling of forest fire
behaviour has increased recently, and this development is timely because
of increased fire risks due to climate change and increases in population
at the wildland-urban interface.
An important and diffcult problem which has not received adequate
attention is fire- spotting behaviour. Large-scale forest fires often
generate powerful up-drafts which carry firebrands into the atmosphere;
the firebrands are then transported to regions remote from the original
fire. If the firebrand lands on dry unburnt fuel, a new fire (a spot-fire)
may begin. Such spot-fires increase the rate of spread of fires and
enable fires to spread across natural and artificial firebreaks such
as rivers and roads. Thus, spot-fires are a particularly dangerous
aspect of the forest fire management problem. At the same time, fire-spotting
lends itself to a rich set of open mathematical and statistical modelling
problems.
The objective of the proposed workshop is to bring together mathematicians,
statisticians, engineering scientists and forest fire modellers and
managers to identify good approaches to this problem. For example,
we will learn about some preliminary investigations into the linking
of a transport model for firebrands into an advection-reaction-diffusion
model. With models such as this in mind, we will discuss data acquisition
plans with forest managers who are set to acquire a substantial set
of spot-fire behaviour data in late 2009, using infra-red photography.
The plan is to obtain data from a set of prescribed fires on firebrand
source and
material, volume, destination and result. Furthermore, wind engineers
will also be planning corresponding wind tunnel experiments. Thus,
this workshop presents a rare opportunity to bring together experts
from a wide variety of fields to set up an optimal data collection
design. With properly collected data, the Canadian math community
will have a valuable resource to help it solve a modelling problem
of tremendous importance.
Invited Participants:
Chris Bose, Victoria
Robert Bryce, Prometheus Software Dev't
John Braun, Western Ontario
Brett Butler, USDA Forest Service
Derek Ming Onn Chong, Melbourne
Michael Francis, U. Victoria
Jim Gould, CSIRO / Canadian Forest Service
Lengyi Han, Western Ontario
Thomas Hillen, University of Alberta
Hye-Rin Kim, Western Ontario
Greg Kopp,Western Ontario
Chelene Krezek, Canadian Forest Service
Zinovi Krougly, Western Ontario
Reg Kulperger, Western Ontario
Nathalie Lavoie, Ministère des Ressources naturelles
et de la Faune de Québec
Jonathan Lee, Western Ontario
Rodney Linn, Los Alamos, National Laboratory
Weiwei Liu, Western Ontario
Esam Mahdi, Western Ontario
Dave Martell, UToronto
Rob Mcalpine, Ontario MNR
Ian McLeod,Western Ontario
Cordy Tymstra, Alberta Sustainable Resource Dev't
Mike Wotton, Canadian Forest Service/UToronto
Hao Yu, Western Ontario
Tentative Program
| Thursday April 23 |
| 1:00 |
Welcome
Rob Mcalpine, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources |
| Applied Models - current state of the art |
| 1:10 |
Canadian FBP system - current and future
treatment of spotting
Mike Wotton, U of T / Canadian Forest Service |
| 1:30 |
US models of spot fire and their applications
Brett Butler, USDA Forest Service |
| 1:50 |
Prometheus and spot fires
Cordy Tymstra, Promoetheus |
| 2:10 |
Phoenix project - realistic spotting model development
Derek Onn Cho , U. Melbourne |
| 2:30 |
Break |
| Current Experimentation |
| 2:45 |
Spot fire models and research in Australia
Jim Gould, CSIRO / Canadian Forest Service |
| 3:20 |
IR Camera research into Fire Behavior in Canada
Chelene Krezek, Canadian Forest Service |
| 3:40 |
NIST Talk
tbd |
| 4:20 |
Round table
all - lead by RSM |
| 5:00 |
end |
| Friday,
April 24 |
| 8:45 |
welcome back - recap
Rob or Dave Stanford |
| Theoretical Modelling |
| 8:50 |
Title TBA
Rodney Linn, Los Alamos, National Laboratory |
| 9:20 |
What distribution do spotting distances follow?
Dave Stanford, UWO |
| 9:50 |
Wind Tunnel Modelling
Greggory Kopp, UWO |
| 10:30 |
Break |
| 10:45 |
Mathematical modelling of spotting
Thomas Hillen / Jon Martin, U. Alberta |
| 11:15 |
Parallel spatial grid computing
Hao Yu, UWO |
| 11:30 |
Lunch |
| 1:00 |
Round Table
all - led by DAS / BMW |
| 2:00 |
Summary --- Future Plans
all - led by RSM |
| 2:15 |
Possibility for small group breakout meetings |
| 3:00 |
end |
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