237 research outputs found
Mesogeos: A multi-purpose dataset for data-driven wildfire modeling in the Mediterranean
We introduce Mesogeos, a large-scale multi-purpose dataset for wildfire
modeling in the Mediterranean. Mesogeos integrates variables representing
wildfire drivers (meteorology, vegetation, human activity) and historical
records of wildfire ignitions and burned areas for 17 years (2006-2022). It is
designed as a cloud-friendly spatio-temporal dataset, namely a datacube,
harmonizing all variables in a grid of 1km x 1km x 1-day resolution. The
datacube structure offers opportunities to assess machine learning (ML) usage
in various wildfire modeling tasks. We extract two ML-ready datasets that
establish distinct tracks to demonstrate this potential: (1) short-term
wildfire danger forecasting and (2) final burned area estimation given the
point of ignition. We define appropriate metrics and baselines to evaluate the
performance of models in each track. By publishing the datacube, along with the
code to create the ML datasets and models, we encourage the community to foster
the implementation of additional tracks for mitigating the increasing threat of
wildfires in the Mediterranean
Morphing Ensemble Kalman Filters
A new type of ensemble filter is proposed, which combines an ensemble Kalman
filter (EnKF) with the ideas of morphing and registration from image
processing. This results in filters suitable for nonlinear problems whose
solutions exhibit moving coherent features, such as thin interfaces in wildfire
modeling. The ensemble members are represented as the composition of one common
state with a spatial transformation, called registration mapping, plus a
residual. A fully automatic registration method is used that requires only
gridded data, so the features in the model state do not need to be identified
by the user. The morphing EnKF operates on a transformed state consisting of
the registration mapping and the residual. Essentially, the morphing EnKF uses
intermediate states obtained by morphing instead of linear combinations of the
states.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures. Added DDDAS references to the introductio
A systematic review and bibliometric analysis of wildland fire behavior modeling
Wildland fires have become a major research subject among the national and international research community. Different simulation models have been developed to prevent this phenomenon. Nevertheless, fire propagation models are, until now, challenging due to the complexity of physics and chemistry, high computational requirements to solve physical models, and the difficulty defining the input parameters. Nevertheless, researchers have made immense progress in understanding wildland fire spread. This work reviews the state-of-the-art and lessons learned from the relevant literature to drive further advancement and provide the scientific community with a comprehensive summary of the main developments. The major findings or general research-based trends were related to the advancement of technology and computational resources, as well as advances in the physical interpretation of the acceleration of wildfires. Although wildfires result from the interaction between fundamental processes that govern the combustion at the solid- and gas-phase, the subsequent heat transfer and ignition of adjacent fuels are still not fully resolved at a large scale. However, there are some research gaps and emerging trends within this issue that should be given more attention in future investigations. Hence, in view of further improvements in wildfire modeling, increases in computational resources will allow upscaling of physical models, and technological advancements are being developed to provide near real-time predictive fire behavior modeling. Thus, the development of two-way coupled models with weather prediction and fire propagation models is the main direction of future work.This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)
within the R&D Units Project Scope UIDB/00319/2020 (ALGORITMI) and R&D Units Project Scope
UIDP/04077/2020 (METRICS) and through project: PCIF/GRF/0141/2019: “O3F—An Optimization
Framework to reduce Forest Fire
Deep Learning for Global Wildfire Forecasting
Climate change is expected to aggravate wildfire activity through the
exacerbation of fire weather. Improving our capabilities to anticipate
wildfires on a global scale is of uttermost importance for mitigating their
negative effects. In this work, we create a global fire dataset and demonstrate
a prototype for predicting the presence of global burned areas on a
sub-seasonal scale with the use of segmentation deep learning models.
Particularly, we present an open-access global analysis-ready datacube, which
contains a variety of variables related to the seasonal and sub-seasonal fire
drivers (climate, vegetation, oceanic indices, human-related variables), as
well as the historical burned areas and wildfire emissions for 2001-2021. We
train a deep learning model, which treats global wildfire forecasting as an
image segmentation task and skillfully predicts the presence of burned areas 8,
16, 32 and 64 days ahead of time. Our work motivates the use of deep learning
for global burned area forecasting and paves the way towards improved
anticipation of global wildfire patterns.Comment: Accepted at the NeurIPS 2022 workshop on Tackling Climate Change with
Machine Learnin
Assessing wildland fire risk transmission to communities in northern Spain
We assessed potential economic losses and transmission to residential houses from wildland fires in a rural area of central Navarra (Spain). Expected losses were quantified at the individual structure level (n = 306) in 14 rural communities by combining fire model predictions of burn probability and fire intensity with susceptibility functions derived from expert judgement. Fire exposure was estimated by simulating 50,000 fire events that replicated extreme (97th percentile) historical fire weather conditions. Spatial ignition probabilities were used in the simulations to account for non-random ignitions, and were estimated from a fire occurrence model generated with an artificial neural network. The results showed that ignition probability explained most of spatial variation in risk, with economic value of structures having only a minor effect. Average expected loss to residential houses from a single wildfire event in the study area was 7955¿, and ranged from a low of 740 to the high of 28,725¿. Major fire flow-paths were analyzed to understand fire transmission from surrounding municipalities and showed that incoming fires from the north exhibited strong pathways into the core of the study area, and fires spreading from the south had the highest likelihood of reaching target residential structures from the longest distances (>5 km). Community firesheds revealed the scale of risk to communities and extended well beyond administrative boundaries. The results provided a quantitative risk assessment that can be used by insurance companies and local landscape managers to prioritize and allocate investments to treat wildland fuels and identify clusters of high expected loss within communities. The methodological framework can be extended to other fire-prone southern European Union countries where communities are threatened by large wildland fires.This work was funded by a University of Lleida Research training fellowship to FermÃn J. Alcasena UrdÃroz
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