FARSITE: Fire Area Simulator

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Mark Finney, Research Forester

Staff

Mark Finney, Research Forester; Chuck McHugh, Forester

INTRODUCTION

Fire growth simulation is intended to adapt existing fire behavior models to operate in a two-dimensional simulation environment. Fire growth simulation requires spatial data on fuels, topography, and weather all of which are required as inputs to the basic constituent fire behavior models. Individually, the basic fire behavior models incorporated into FARSITE are classified as point-based or 1-D models because they produce fire spread rates, directions, and spread or spotting distances, based on properties of the environment obtained from one point on the ground at one point in time. When combined into FARSITE, the simulation generates fire growth and behavior in 2-dimensions using the varying values of the environment to calculate fire progress over time and space. This fire progression can be animated to show fire moving over landscapes.

Goals and Objectives: The FARSITE project was begun in 1993 with the objective of producing a stand-alone fire growth simulation that was practical for personal computers running the Windows operating system. The goals were to include all of the operational fire behavior models, including surface fire, crown fire, spotting, fuel moisture, fire acceleration, and fuel consumption.

Project Status: After three releases of the program, completed in 2007, the program offers the intended features and is no longer being modified, except for bug fixes. A full revision of the program is required to bring the graphical user interface up to modern standards. The program and user documentation is distributed free over the internet (http://firemodels.org). The program is officially a National system and is supported by the Fire Applications Support desk in Boise.

KEY RESULTS

Fire simulation using FARSITE has shown to be very practical and is widely used in support of wildland fire operations and planning. FARSITE is parallelized to operate efficiently on multiple processors which work well on modern multi-core CPUs. FARSITE has been taught as part of NWCG fire behavior training in its own course (S493) and will be incorporated into a new more comprehensive training course (in 2009) referred to as S-495. FARSITE is used internationally because of the general input requirements.

FUNDING ORGANIZATIONS

Original funding for developing FARSITE was obtained from the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. User support and bug fixes are supported by the U.S. Forest Service.

PUBLICATIONS AND PRODUCTS

The technical documentation of the simulation structure has been published, and a electronic help system and tutorial are provided with the software. The program and user documentation is distributed free over the internet (http://firemodels.org).

Finney, M.A. 1994. Modeling the spread and behavior of prescribed natural fires. In: Proc. 12th International Conference on fire and forest meteorology. October 26-28, 1993, Jekyll Island, GA. Soc. Am. For. Pp 138-143.

Finney, M.A. 1995b. Fire growth modeling in the Sierra Nevada of California. In: J.K. Brown, R.W Mutch, C.W. Spoon, and R.H. Wakimoto. Proc. Symp. on Fire in Wilderness and Park Management. Missoula MT March 30-April1 1993. Pp 189-191.

Finney, M.A. and K.C. Ryan. 1995. Use of the FARSITE fire growth model for fire prediction in US National Parks. Proc. The International Emergency Mgt. and Engineering Conf. May 1995 Sofia Antipolis, France. pp 183-189

Green, K., M.A. Finney, J.Campbell, D.Weinstein, and V. Landrum. 1995. Fire! Using GIS to predict fire behavior. J. For. 93(5):21-25.

Finney, M.A. 1998. FARSITE: Fire Area Simulator – model development and evaluation. USDA For. Serv. Res. Pap. RMRS-RP-4. 47p.

Finney, M.A. and P.L. Andrews. 1998. FARSITE: Fire Area Simulator -- A model for fire growth simulation. Fire management notes. 59(2):13-15

Finney, M.A. and P.L. Andrews. 1998. The FARSITE Fire Area Simulator: Fire management applications and lessons of Summer 1994. In K. Close and R.A. Bartlette (eds.) Fire management under fire (Adapting to Change). Proc. Of the 1994 Interior west fire council meeting and program. Intl. Assoc. Wildl. Fire. Fairfield WA. Pp 209-216.

Finney, M.A. and P.L. Andrews. 1998. Application and status of the FARSITE fire area simulator. IN Proc. III International Conference on Forest Fire Research and 14th Conf. on Fire and Forest Meteorology. Luso, Coimbra-Portugal Nov 16-20th 1998. ADAI publishers. pp755-760.

Keane, R.E., J.L. Garner, K.M. Schmidt, D.G. Long, J.P. Menakis, and M.A. Finney. 1998a. Development of the Input Spatial Data Layers for the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Complex, USA. USDA For. Serv. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-3.

Finney, M.A. 1999. Mechanistic modeling of landscape fire patterns. Chapter 8. In D.J. Mladenoff and W.L. Baker (eds) Spatial modeling of forest landscapes: approaches and applications. Cambridge University Press. Pp186-209

Finney, M.A., D.B. Sapsis, and B. Bahro. 2002. Use of FARSITE for simulating fire suppression and analyzing fuel treatment economics. In Symp. on Fire and California Ecosystems: integrating ecology prevention and management. Nov. 1998

Stratton, Rick D. Assessing the Effectiveness of Landscape Fuel Treatments on Fire Growth and Behavior. Journal of Forestry. Pp 32-40 October/November 2004

Stratton, Rick D. Guidance on Spatial Wildland Fire Analysis: Models, Tools, and Techniques. USDA Forest Service Gen.Tech.Rep RMRS-GTR-183. 2006