Author(s)

S. Hoya White, A. Martín del Rey & G. Rodríguez Sánchez

Abstract

A new model for predicting fire propagation in homogeneous environments, based on the transfer of a fractional burned area, is introduced in this paper. A particular type of discrete dynamical system, called a hexagonal bidimensional cellular automaton, is used in order to design the model. The simulations obtained are found to be in agreement with the experience of fire spreading in real forests. Keywords: fire spreading, hexagonal cellular automata, mathematical modelling. 1 Introduction As is well-known, forest fires is one of the major ecological agents in forest since they alter the structure and composition of forest and adversely affect human health and the supply of goods and services on which communities depend. Consequently, the study of forest fires have received increased public attention by the scientific community. Specifically, several mathematical models have been appeared in the literature in order to study the spreading of forest fire fronts. The efforts to model the growth of the fire front by means of mathematical models can be classified according to two approaches: vector models and cellular automata models. Vector models assume that the fire front spreads according to a well-defined growth law, and take a standard geometrical shape (see, for example, Vakalis et al. [6]). On the other hand, several types of cellular automata models for fire spreading have been introduced in the literature (see Karafyllidis [1, 2]).

Keywords

fire spreading, hexagonal cellular automata, mathematical modelling.