Wildfire Modeling: Challenges, Progress, and Opportunities

Wildfires are a significant part of the global fire safety problem. Each year they burn millions of acres of land, lead to loss of life, and cause billions of dollars in damages. Just in the U.S. the adjusted impacts of wildfires exceeded $100 Billion over the past 22 years. A fundamental understanding of wildfire behavior is essential to mitigate these effects, better estimate the risks, and develop more effective and efficient preparedness and response strategies, particularly for high-impact events. While wildfire models play an important role in informing and addressing some of these needs, delivering a high-fidelity operational forecast is challenging, primarily due to wildfires’ inherent multiscale and stochastic behavior. This talk elaborates on some of the challenges in physics-based modeling of wildfire spread with an emphasis on firebrand showers, also known as ember attacks. In addition, a synthesis of our recent contributions and ongoing efforts in modeling spot fires will be discussed, along with emerging opportunities for the next-generation wildfire models.

Speaker: Ali Tohidi, San Jose State University