Project Summary

The goal of this work is to develop advanced Information Technology tools, mathematical models, and prototype infrastructure for disaster modeling and management. The project will bring comprehensive information and numerical prediction where it is needed, at the disaster command center, in real time.

The focus application is wildland fires. The specific goal of the project is to provide a field-tested demo of a mathematical model to help predict fire behavior and run virtual experiments of fire-fighting strategies in much faster than real time. The system will incorporate large volume of information from data streams, e.g., as maps, sensor, surveyance, and weather data. A full system test will be made on an actual fire site The mathematical model will run on remote supercomputers. The model will be controlled and the results visualized from laptops and palmtops in the field. Computers in the field will be connected to the Internet by wireless ethernet and a broadband satellite link. Sensors and airborne imagers will also be networked wirelessly. These communication technologies are becoming available commercially at a reasonable cost.

Gallery and Links

Simulations of wildfire coupled with a mesoscale weather model (Janice Coen)

Wildfire simulation by stochastic reaction-diffusion differential equations (Jan Mandel and Tolya Puhalskii)

fire jumping over a fire line (MPEG, 8MB)

fire with spotting, jumping over a fire line (MPEG, 16MB)

Forest Fire Imaging Experimental System (Tony Vodacek)

Papers

Dynamic Data Driven Wildfire Modeling, to appear in F. Darema (ed.), Dynamic.Data Driven Applications Systems, Kluwer, 2004

Funding

This is a collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation:

University of Colorado at Denver, award 0325314
Rochester Institute of Technology, award 0324989
Texas A&M University, award 0324988
University of Kentucky, award 0324876
National Center for Atmospheric Research, award 0324910

Agency/Program: NSF ITR (Medium-sized proposal)

The NSF Program Director is Frederica Darema.

Collaborators (top)

Lynn S. Bennethum, University of Colorado at Denver
Janice L. Coen, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Craig C. Douglas, University of Kentucky
Leopoldo P. Franca, University of Colorado at Denver
Craig Johns, University of Colorado at Denver
Robert Kremens, Rochester Institute of Technology
Jan Mandel (Principal Investigator), University of Colorado at Denver
Anatolii Puhalskii, University of Colorado at Denver
Anthony Vodacek, Rochester Institute of Technology
Wei Zhao, Texas A&M University