Modeling and Simulating Prescribed Fire Ignition Techniques

Prescribed fire ignition techniques have significant impact on prescribed fires' growth behavior. This paper presents a systematic way of modeling and simulating prescribed fire ignition techniques. An ignition plan specification is developed to formally specify the ignition activities and schedules of prescribed burning events. The ignition plan specification is used by ignition agents, which transform an ignition plan into detailed tasks and carry out the ignition tasks while coupling with a fire spread simulation model. Simulation results of six ignition scenarios corresponding to six basic ignition techniques are provided. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed modeling approach and show that different ignition techniques can result in different fire growth patterns for prescribed fires.