The Social Network & Community JUST for Firefighters
Computer Program Designed to Predict Wildfire Spread
BUTTE, Mont. - The executive director of the Rocky Mountain Supercomputing Center says a computer program is possible that would predict the spread of wildfires and aid firefighters in the field.
Earl Dodd says the supercomputer using a program model called Project Landview was able to produce a wildfire simulator.
That program was used by Democratic U.S. Sen. John Tester at town hall meetings on land management.
Dodd says with more money the program could be made into a user-friendly tool for fighting wildfires.
Firefighting agencies rely on historical data, weather conditions and other factors to predict wildfires and deploy firefighters.
Dodd says the supercomputer could run that information and more through a simulator to quickly make wildfire predictions.
___
Information from: The Montana Standard, http://www.mtstandard.com
Related
Project Landview
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Earl Dodd says the supercomputer using a program model called Project Landview was able to produce a wildfire simulator.
That program was used by Democratic U.S. Sen. John Tester at town hall meetings on land management.
Dodd says with more money the program could be made into a user-friendly tool for fighting wildfires.
Firefighting agencies rely on historical data, weather conditions and other factors to predict wildfires and deploy firefighters.
Dodd says the supercomputer could run that information and more through a simulator to quickly make wildfire predictions.
___
Information from: The Montana Standard, http://www.mtstandard.com
Related
Project Landview
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Oldman on
-
Maybe they can program this "supercomputer" to put the fires out too, eliminating the need to put so many peoples lives in danger.
I hope they are not using Mr. Gates' operating system!
-
Permalink Reply by Justin Buck on
-
i 2nd that lol
-
Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
-
It's interesting how the article notes that this is new technology... which is absolute nonsense. Programs over 20 years ago, one called cellular automata, developed by a University of California Santa Barbara professor who spent most of his career working for NASA, developing technology that he probably still can't talk about... But what he could share in the 80's was a program that had a split screen. On one side was real time satellite imagery and on the other was what the computer would predict.
To take this a little further than the article, and again, this is 20-year old technology, an incident commander, using a touch sensitive screen, could use a light pen to draw on the computer screen where a dozer line might be put in or a retardant drop. The computer would then generate the predicted outcome using the cellular automata program.
Check out what I am talking about by clicking this link: http://schuelaw.whitman.edu/JavaApplets/ForestFireApplet/
TCSS,
CBz
-
-
The point of using computer modeling is to not put lives at risk. The models can show you predicted outcomes based on the tactics you may choose. This means that something that you think might work, can be tried out first on a computer screen. Factors such as wind, topography, elevation, fire history, etc. are all used to make these predictions.
Technology needs to be embraced to let things we dream up help us to do our jobs better. No one is saying to use a computer model to put lives in jeopardy. Instead, you have to think in terms of how to use science to enable you to use less to get more...
Example: Take a dry stream bed... it rains, and the water flows down the dry stream bed using gravity to move the water. Reverse this, and replace water with fire. Fire / heat will always move up. We know how much faster a fire can travel uphill, right? These things are givens. We know how fire behaves. So now, think a little out of the box and consider that fire behaves exactly like the water flowing down a stream By this, I mean that if water hits an obstacle, such as a rock, it simply goes around it.
Imagine instead of denuding the soil for years with massive fire breaks when all you really needed was a small strategically placed "rock" or in this case, a control line that has been cleared to allow the fire to go around the structure. Knowing where to put these smaller "breaks" could make a big difference in how we approach structure protection in the future as well as pre-planning responses.
Having a computer with a large database to help me make decisions at a fire is just another tool in the toolbox.
Embrace this technology or become just another extinct dinosaur... and we all know why the dinosaur's became extinct!
TCSS,
CBz
-
-
exactly Tom... couple the technology with your personal experiences and SOG's and chances are pretty good that you will make the right decisions, especially if you are using the trigger point concept. CBz
© 2024 Created by Firefighter Nation WebChief.
Powered by
