DEVS-FIRE: design and application of formal discrete event wildfire spread and suppression models

DEVS-FIRE is a discrete event system specification (DEVS) model for simulating wildfire spread and suppression. It employs a cellular space model to simulate fire spread and agent models that interact with the cellular space to simulate fire suppression with realistic tactics. The complex interplay among forest cells and agents calls for formal treatment of the fire spread and fire suppression models to verify the correctness of DEVS-FIRE. This paper gives formal design specifications of fire spread and suppression agent models used in DEVS-FIRE and applies DEVS-FIRE to both artificially generated and real topography, fuels and weather data for a study area located in the US state of Texas. The paper also develops a new method, called pre_Schedule, for scheduling ignition events of forest cells more efficiently than the original onTime_Schedule event scheduling method used in DEVS-FIRE. Simulation results show the performance improvement of the new method, and demonstrate the utility of DEVS-FIRE as a viable discrete event model for wildfire simulations.

[1]  George L. W. Perry,et al.  Current approaches to modelling the spread of wildland fire: a review , 1998 .

[2]  Bernard P. Zeigler,et al.  Expressing a Forest Cell Model in Parallel DEVS and Timed Cell-DEVS Formalisms , 2003 .

[3]  Xiaolin Hu,et al.  A hybrid agent-cellular space modeling approach for fire spread and suppression simulation , 2005, Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, 2005..

[4]  Bernard P. Zeigler,et al.  Forest Fire Spread and Suppression in DEVS , 2004, Simul..

[5]  Xiaolin Hu,et al.  Agent-based modeling and simulation of wildland fire suppression , 2007, 2007 Winter Simulation Conference.

[6]  Gabriel A. Wainer.  Applying Cell-DEVS Methodology for Modeling the Environment , 2006, Simul..

[7]  H. Anderson.  Aids to Determining Fuel Models for Estimating Fire Behavior , 1982 .

[8]  Jean François Santucci,et al.  Modelling and simulation of ecological propagation processes: application to fire spread , 2005, Environmental Modelling & Software.

[9]  Gabriel Wainer,et al.  Timed cell-DEVS: modeling and simulation of cell spaces , 2001 .

[10]  Xiaolin Hu,et al.  Performance Measurement of Dynamic Structure DEVS for Large-Scale Cellular Space Models , 2009, Simul..

[11]  Xiaolin Hu,et al.  Towards validation of DEVS-FIRE wildfire simulation model , 2008, SpringSim '08.

[12]  Gabriel A. Wainer,et al.  Comparing simulation methods for fire spreading across a fuel bed , 2002 .

[13]  Bernard P. Zeigler,et al.  Integrating Fire Suppression into a DEVS Cellular Forest Fire Spread Model , 2005 .

[14]  Robert C. Seli,et al.  BehavePlus fire modeling system, version 4.0: User's Guide , 2005 .

[15]  E. Pastor,et al.  Mathematical models and calculation systems for the study of wildland fire behaviour , 2003 .

[16]  G. Richards.  An elliptical growth model of forest fire fronts and its numerical solution , 1990 .

[17]  T. Clark,et al.  Description of a coupled atmosphere–fire model , 2004 .

[18]  Gabriel Wainer,et al.  Modeling and simulation tool for grid-cell based fire spread models. , 2002 .

[19]  John von Neumann,et al.  Theory Of Self Reproducing Automata , 1967 .

[20]  Xiaolin Hu,et al.  Integrated simulation and optimization for wildfire containment , 2009, TOMC.

[21]  Bernard P. Zeigler,et al.  Theory of Modelling and Simulation , 1979, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[22]  Suzana Dragicevic,et al.  Design and implementation of an integrated GIS-based cellular automata model to characterize forest fire behaviour , 2008 .

[23]  Cordy Tymstra,et al.  Impact of climate change on area burned in Alberta’s boreal forest , 2007 .

[24]  B. P. Ziegler,et al.  Theory of Modeling and Simulation , 1976 .

[25]  John R. Coleman,et al.  A real-time computer application for the prediction of fire spread across the Australian landscape , 1996, Simul..

[26]  David R. C. Hill,et al.  1 OBJECT-ORIENTED FRAMEWORK FOR MODELLING AND SIMULATION OF PROPAGATION PROCESSES : APPLICATION TO A FIRE SPREADING , 2004 .

[27]  C. E. Van Wagner,et al.  Development and structure of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System , 1987 .

[28]  M. Finney.  FARSITE : Fire Area Simulator : model development and evaluation , 1998 .

[29]  Lewis Ntaimo,et al.  A Simulation and Stochastic Integer Programming Approach to Wildfire Initial Attack Planning , 2013 .

[30]  Gabriel A. Wainer,et al.  Specification of Discrete Event Models for Fire Spreading , 2005, Simul..

[31]  Gabriel A. Wainer,et al.  Models of complex physical systems using Cell-DEVS , 2001, Proceedings. 34th Annual Simulation Symposium.

[32]  Lewis Ntaimo.  Two-Dimensional Fire Spread Decomposition in Cellular DEVS Models , 2006 .

[33]  Jeremy S. Fried,et al.  Simulating wildfire containment with realistic tactics , 1996 .

[34]  Janice L. Coen,et al.  A Coupled AtmosphereFire Model: Convective Feedback on Fire-Line Dynamics , 1996 .

[35]  Xiaolin Hu,et al.  DEVS-FIRE: Towards an Integrated Simulation Environment for Surface Wildfire Spread and Containment , 2008, Simul..

[36]  Janice L. Coen,et al.  A Coupled Atmosphere-Fire Model: Role of the Convective Froude Number and Dynamic Fingering at the Fireline , 1996 .

[37]  Xiaolin Hu,et al.  Dynamic Multi-resolution Cellular Space Modeling for Forest Fire Simulation , 2006 .

[38]  H. Anderson,et al.  Predicting wind-driven wild land fire size and shape / , 1983 .

[39]  P. Andrews.  BEHAVE : Fire Behavior Prediction and Fuel Modeling System - BURN Subsystem, Part 1 , 1986 .