Modeling the spatial evolution wildfires using random spread process

Abstract

The study of wildfire spread and the growth of the area burned is an important task in ecological studies and in other contexts. In this work we present a model for fire spread and show the results obtained from simulations of burned areas. The model is based on probabilities of fire at different locations. Such probabilities are obtained from the intensity function of a spatial point process model fitted to the observed pattern of fires in the Valencian Community for the years 1993–2015. The models, applied to different wildfires in Spain, including the different temporal states, combines the features of a network model with those of a quasi-physical model of the interaction between burning and nonburning cells, which strongly depends on covariates. The results of the simulated wildfire burned areas resemble the burned areas observed in real cases, suggesting that the model proposed, based on a Markov process called Random Spread Process, works adequately. The model can be extended to simulate other random spread processes such as epidemics.