The Control and Spread of Wildfires II

Team: 99

School: Melrose

Area of Science: Physics, Ecology

Interim: Project Definition:
This year we are continuing the Control and Spread of Wildfires project, in which we are trying to predict a wildfire’s progression in real life situations. We will begin by modeling grass fires on the Llano Estacado, which is our home. Our rural areas depend solely upon volunteer fire departments with limited resources. So, having a tool to help plan and predict the fires current and future progress would be beneficial. This would allow the fire departments to use their resources more safely and more effectively.
Project Solution:
Last year we were able to get an accurate model of a small flat area with moisture, wind speed, wind direction, and fuel density as our variables. We modeled in StarLogo TNG. During the summer we were also able to incorporate elevation differentials into our model. While we were modeling, however, we discovered limitations in StarLogo TNG, such as a limited grid space. This year we plan on changing languages to NetLogo, with which we will be able to increase the area that we are modeling, import satellite images containing real elevations and real fuel density reading, and permit more customized commands. With time we would also be able to incorporate live weather forecasting. This would take a large amount of computing power and would be difficult for a standard PC to operate since we were testing the limits of our PC with the simpler model.
Our program will work with an individual “fire” that will react to wind, elevation, and moisture, while consuming a certain amount of fuel on a “patch,” during an amount of time. The fire will remain motionless, but will create a second fire that will move away from the original. Whether or not the fire progresses is determined by probabilities that were determined through trial and error, with an experienced fire fighter telling us whether or not our model was resembling the real world. We did take our model before the Forrest Volunteer Fire Department and were able to accurately model a fire that they recently fought.
Progress to Date:
Currently we have last years improved model on StarLogo TNG, all of our research, NetLogo program, and sources for our new satellite images. This is where we are having difficulties. None of the members on our team are familiar with NetLogo enough to begin transferring our current code. We also don’t know how to retrieve or interpret the information on our satellite images. So we have all of the information to begin coding, but currently don’t know how. In the future, however, we are planning to get some help from someone who can point us in the proper direction as far as our coding goes.

Team Members:
Richard Rush
Kyle Jacobs
Randall Rush

Sponsoring Teachers:
Mr. Daugherty
Mrs. Raulie

Sources:
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Holecheck, Pieper, Herbel, Range Management, Principles and Practices,. 3.
"Fire." wikipedia the free encyclopedia. 2008. 20 Nov 2008
"Fire." FEMA.gov. 2006. 30 Mar 2009
Harris , Tom. "How Fire Works." HowStuffWorks.com. 1998. 20 Nov 2008
David Rush, Forrest Volunteer Fire Department, Training Coordinator
Addison-Wesley, Chemistry of Firefighting, copyright 1990

Team Members:

  Randall Rush
  Richard Rush
  Kyle Jacobs
  Kevin Hughes

Sponsoring Teacher: Alan Daugherty

Mail the entire Team