Fire is very important for maintaining balance in the ecosystems and is used by fire management across the world to regulate growth of vegetation in natural conservation areas. However, improper management of fire may lead to hazardous behaviour. Fire modelling tools are implemented to provide fire managers with a platform to test and plan fire management activities. Fire modelling occurs in two parts: fire behaviour models and fire spread models, where fire behaviour models account for the behaviour of fires that is used in fire spread models to model the propagation of a fire event. Since fire is a worldwide phenomenon a number of fire modelling approaches have been developed across the world. Most existing fire models only model either fire behaviour or fire spread, but not both, hence full integration of fire models into GIS is not completely implemented. Full integration of environmental modelling in GIS refers to the case where an environmental model such as a fire model is implemented within a GIS environment, without requiring any transfer of data from other external environments. Most existing GIS based fire spread models account for fire propagation in the direction of prevailing winds (or defined fire channels) as opposed to full fire spread in all directions. The purpose of this study is to illustrate the role of GIS in fire management through the development of a fully integrated, predictive, wind driven, surface fire model. The fire model developed in this study models both the risk of fire occurring (fire behaviour model), and the propagation of a fire in case of an ignition incident (fire spread model), hence full integration of fire modelling in a GIS environment. The fire behaviour model is based on prevailing meteorological conditions, the type of vegetation in an area, and the topography. The spread of a fire in this model is determined by the transfer of heat energy and rate of spread of fire, and is developed based on the Cellular Automata (CA) modelling approach. This model considers the spread of fire in all directions instead of the forward wind direction only as is the case in most fire spread models. The fire behaviour model calculates fire intensity and rate of spread which are used in the fire spread model, hence demonstrating the full integration of fire modelling in GIS. No external data exchange with the model occurs except for acquisition of input data such as measured values of environmental conditions. v This cellular automata based fire spread model is developed in the ArcGIS ModelBuilder geoprocessing environment, and requires the development of a custom geoprocessing function tool to facilitate the fast and effective performance of the model. The test study area used in this research is the Kruger National Park because of frequent fire activity that occurs in the park, as a result of management activities and accidental fires, and also because these fires are recorded by park fire ecologists. Validation of the model is achieved by comparison of simulated fire areas after a certain period of time with known location of the fire at that particular time. This is achieved by the mapping of fire scars and active fire areas acquired from MODIS Terra and Aqua images, fire scars are also acquired from the Kruger National Park Scientific Services. Upon evaluation, the results of the fire model show successful simulation of fire area with respect to time. The implementation of the model within the ArcGIS environment is also performed successfully. The study thus concludes that GIS can be successfully used for the development of a fully integrated (embedded) fire model
