Simulation of wildfire spread using cellular automata with randomized local sources

Abstract

The accuracy of Cellular Automata (CA) methods for simulating wildfires is limited by the fact that spread directions are constrained to the few angles imposed by the regular lattice of cells. To mitigate such problem, this paper proposes a new CA in which a local randomization of the spread directions is explicitly introduced over the lattice. The suggested technique, inspired by a method already used for simulating lava flows, is empirically investigated under homogeneous conditions and by comparison with the vector-based simulator FARSITE. According to the presented results, the adopted randomization seems to be able to significantly improve the accuracy of CA based on a standard center-to-center ignition scheme. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.