Our project attempts to model a forest fire and create a plan to help fight the wild fire. It is not intended as a replacement to human predictions, but rather as an enhancer. The program will be easy to interact with and the user need only input his or her forest through specifications such as variety of species, density, current winds, and other such factors. The program will then process the given information into a report which instructs the user on what to do. It will also inform the user about how the forest may grow back and recover after the fire.

By Studying the different techniques and observations of computer and forestry scientists who've attempted this idea before us, we found the basics of many of the equations and principles that govern fire simulation models. In particular we studied the FARSITE fire simulator which uses the Huygen's principle of fire simulation. All fire models use an ellipsoidal shape of fire growth. Some programs use 3D modeling and some use 2D, but for most memory-space conscious programs, even those using a supercomputer, 2D modeling can accomplish all the calculations and modeling complexity that three-d array models can. Our research taught us about the different simulator techniques for crown (canopy) and surface fires. The Huygen's principle I mentioned involves using the fire environment at each vertex on the (ellipsoidal) fire perimeter to calculate an elliptical wavelet at each time interval. We also found the definite variables necessary to input: fuel moisture, terrain, blocks of free space, and land slope, (which can be modeled in a 2D array model environment). By further careful study of past successful techniques, I believe we can begin to create our own fire growth model.

Difficulties we may run into are with the advanced calculus used in the governing equations of Huygen's fire models. We can probably think we can work around that. We may be able to incorporate some of these equations into our program to enhance it, though. Also, due to time constraints and our ability, we probably won’t be able to develop as intricate of a model.

We do not have any code yet, though we have a very good idea of where to start. Initially, we will start with a simple, flat terrain without any wind, variety in tree species, etc. It will only look at the spread of the fire if it were ignited in a lab where everything is controlled. One we get this model working well, we will add the other variables and their changes to the model. Hopefully, we can work our way up to a model complete with almost all of the factors involved in a fire. As said above, though, time and our ability are restraining us.

We expect that the program, when even a few extra variables are added, will start to require higher computing capabilities, such as the necessity of using “theta.” When wild fires get big enough, they have the ability to create hurricane force winds due to air pressure. This will become very complex very fast. It will begin to need large amounts of memory, speed, and many other of the resources of the higher supercomputers.