Crown Fire Initiation Spread (CFIS) System

CFIS is a software tool incorporating several recently developed models designed to simulate crown fire behavior. The main outputs of CFIS are:

  1. the likelihood of crown fire initiation or occurrence;
  2. the type of crown fire (active vs. passive) and its rate of spread; and
  3. the minimum spotting distance required to increase a fire's overall forward rate of spread.

The primary models incorporated into CFIS have been evaluated against experimental and wildfire observations. CFIS has applicability as a decision support aid in a wide variety of fire management activities ranging from near-real time prediction of fire behavior to analyzing the impacts of fuel treatments on potential crown fire behavior.

 

Contacts

Martin E. Alexander
Wild Rose Fire Behaviour
mea2@telus.net
curriculum vitae (pdf)

Miguel G. Cruz
CSIRO Bushfire Dynamics & Applications
Miguel.Cruz@csiro.au