CARDIN 3.

0 A MODEL FOR FOREST FIRE SPREAD

AND FIRE FIGHTING SIMULATION

D.Caballero, J. Martinez-Milan, J. Martos y S. Vignote

Departamento de Economia y Gestión . Escuela Tecnica superior de Ingenieros de
Montes. Universidad Politecnica de Madrid.

RESUME CARDIN 2.0 was developed in 1990-1992 for the simulation of wildland fire spread. CARDIN 3.0 ,a
new tool for fire fighting simulation on a PC computer, is presented.
KEYWORDS Fire simulation, fire fighting, fire behavior, spread, simulation, PC

The general CARDIN system uses a square scenery, usually about 4 to 10 Km. of side, that is discretized onto
400x400 small cells. For each cell, data about elevation, slope, aspect, fuel model, land use and wind direction
and speed are considered. All this information is organized by layers in raster format achieved by mean of a
proprietary built-in Geographic Information System (once DIGICAR for CARDIN 2.0).

Other parameters are averaged for all the scenery; thus fuel moisture is given for each of the 13 fuel models
without consideration of local humidity conditions. This kind of information is not cell dependent allowing the user
to change it as many times-as required along the simulation.
Initial fire focuses are point sized, corresponding to one single cell, or line shaped as it happens in already
developed fires. The program includes also a focus detection tool using visual cueing; this has proved to be a
very useful gadget for quick and accurate fire starting positioning.

One significant enhancement over the past 2.0 version is the consideration of three, instead of one, fuel
moisture situations roughly equivalent to first hours in the morning, noon to afternoon and late afternoon and
night. The program checks continuously the time hour and adapts the fuel moisture table consequently to the
simulation time. Each moisture table is user definable and represents the average conditions over the scenery
considered.

The general procedure for the definition of fire shape is based on a spread law for each burning cell, according
to its physical data, that is projected to the eighth surrounding cells. The calculations yields an estimation of fire
reaching time to the mentioned neighboring cells and adds its information to a general fire position matrix that is
continuously updated and sorted by increasing time. The procedure loops considering the next minor time,
applying the general process of neighbor spreading to all the cells that are within the time interval .

The simulation process takes place over digital raster layers of information. In this way slope and aspect, fuel
model and wind direction and intensity is known easily for each X,Y position. The program itself generates new
layers of information and stores it in the same way, including flame length, maximum rate of spread, direction of
maximum rate of spread, fireline intensity, time at which fire is expected to reach the cell and residence time of
flame and ember. This information is used for fire fighting simulation in terms of crew rate of extinction, or for
physical fighting limitations as maximum fire length or fireline intensity that is allowed for each kind of element
and/or action.
For fire fighting simulation the program uses several databases. One of this databases is related to fire crew
elements; other contains the information about the physical improvements within the scenery involved in the
simulation. Each database is updated periodically so giving the simulation enough accuracy on crew and
hardware availability within the fire surroundings. A major database feeds the program local files that are
specifically established for each simulation, adding, deleting and modifying crew records as needed.

Other layer has been added to simulate the effect of fire fighting over the underlying burning fuel. This layer is
called the "Spread Penalty Matrix". For each cell position this file indicates the impedance to fire spread as a
result of the fighting actions. Each kind of action yields a final value that is added in a cumulative process to the
fire spread impedance. A value of 1 (100%) indicates that fire does not trespass this very position; a value of .5
(50%) reduces proportionally the amount of rate of spread and fireline intensity; and a value of 0 indicates that
there is no impediments to fire spread.
For the simulation of motion and transportation of fire fighting elements some vector layers are needed, like
roads, railroads and power lines that are used to compute the position and speed of each element involved. A
table of positioning is built automatically depending upon the transportation media and the kind of line being used.
The rates needed for this computations are stored in user definable tables. Cross-country path digitizing is also
possible, as well as the definition of helicopter jumps or vehicles displacements, in which slope and land
coverage are taken in account for the final speed computation. All this positioning processes allow the user to set
complex trajectories for each fire fighting element that will serve to, simultaneously, move all of them as the fire
spread simulation takes place.

It has been assumed that for indirect attack fireguards being built are barriers to fire spread according to crew
line Construction rate. The process runs dynamically, thus fire spread and fireguard construction are simulated
simultaneously giving an accurate idea of the fireline position and shape relative to the fighting elements involved.

Direct attack assumes that the flame is completely quenched for each burning cell. The position of the crew
elements is automatically calculated following the simulated fireline. If some of the physical limitations threshold
is reached the program stops and warns the user about that situation. For this purpose flame length and fireline
intensity are computed for each position.

Water throwing from air tankers and helicopters takes place over the location pointed by the user. The
coordinates and direction of the discharge are given. The program assumes that the projected mass of water
intercepts the ground level over a rectangular area which major axis lies along the specified direction. A set of
square regions at each side of the center line of the rectangle defines water distribution along the area of
discharge which overlaps the affected cells. Burning cells are penalized in terms of fireline intensity and rate of
spread; discharge over non burning cells reduces the ability of fire spreading by a factor depending upon the
computed water distribution.

The program displays every active and non active element on the screen by means of specific icons for each
type of fighting unit. A proprietary code identifies each unit by type, number and area operation and it is
continuously shown below icon position. Using the combination of three colors, red, white and black, the actual
status is also represented. Four situations are considered for a fire fighting element, inactive, transport, attack
and reloading. Elements outside scenery limits are represented at right side of the screen so giving the fire
manager the ability to know the actual resources for the simulation.

Each fire fighting unit has its own record enclosing all the information related to its activity within the fire
simulation. Thus, actual coordinates, accumulated Working time, type of action actually being performed, status
etc. are updated and stored as the simulation is running. The user can change as many element parameters as
needed at any time along the simulation, force position, type of action, forcce to inactivity, changing its fighting
limits, adjust fighting rates etc. All the data is temporary stored in a database and can be saved for further
simulations under similar conditions.

All the fire fighting planning and simulation can be shown on two or three dimensions over digital coverages,
such as fuel distribution, land uses or a digitized bitmap of the actual portion of cartography that allows a quick
analysis of the position and extent of the simulated fireline relative to critical geographic items like roads, towns,
gas supplies etc.

The program is completed with a useful local fire projection module called FAST (Fire Analysis and Simulation
Tool). it performs very fast simulations of scenery portions of 100x100 cells giving accurate results about fireline
position over time. The program loads in memory all the data relative to this 10000 positions an applies the same
principles as the main simulation routine, but avoiding massive hard disk read-write process so speeding up the
projection. Several simulations can be performed at a very small portion of time, thus allowing the study of
several fire situations.