DIMZAL: A Software Tool to Compute Acceptable Safety Distance

Abstract

The scope of this work is to present a multidisciplinary study in order to propose a tool called DIMZAL. DIMZAL forecasts fuelbreak safety zone sizes. To evaluate a safety zone and to prevent injury, the Acceptable Safety Distance (ASD) between the fire and firefighters is required. This distance is usually set thanks to a general rule-of-thumb: it should be at least 4 times the maximum flame length. A common assumption considers an empirical relationship between fireline intensity and flame length. In the current work which follows on from an oral presentation held at the VII International Conference on Forest Fire Research in Coimbra in 2014, an alternative way is proposed: a closed physical model is applied in order to quantize the ASD. This model is integrated in a software tool, which uses a simulation framework based on Discrete EVent system Specification formalism (DEVS), a 3D physical real-time model of surface fires developed at the University of Corsica and a mobile application based on a Google SDK to display the results