SimFeFeu: a new version of the fire model of Wilensky
Author of the model: Jean-Luc BONNEFOY
Creation date:
Like the "Fire" model of U. Wilensky, the SimFeFeu model simulates the spread of a fire through a forest. It takes into account slope, orientation, dryness, wind and two kinds of vegetation. The simulation results show that the fire’s spread depends critically on the density of trees. The more interesting thing, however, is to explore how the relief is involved in the spread of fire, the displacement of wind, and its action on dryness.
Like the "Fire" model of U. Wilensky, fire is an agent. It becomes an ember, then dies and leaves a patches in a grey color.
Download the model
The model runs with NetLogo 4.0.4.
Wilensky, U. (1999). NetLogo. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/. Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
Open the file SimFeFeu.nlogo using NetLogo.
How it works?
Click the STARTUP button to set up elevation, to calculate slopes, orientations, and dryness according to the wind. If you change the wind (force or direction), you must make a new startup. If you put test ON, the relief is quite simple: two slopes with a line summit in the middle (pycor = 0). Otherwise, it is an import elevation dataset (I took an elevation sheet from the "Grand Canyon" model, see "Credits and References").
Click the SETUP button to set up the trees (green). With the COUVERT VEGETAL chooser, you can choose an import forest dataset, a random forest with a density due to DENSITE slider. It is possible to draw your own forest with CONTOURS MANUELS: you must click on DESSINE_FORET button then draw on the universe (a left click with the mouse).
You can click five times the CARTOGRAPHIE button to draw elevations (brown), slopes (grey), orientations (red), dryness (blue) and, at the end of the simulation, fire dynamic (magenta) and unburned trees (green). One more click and it’s elevation again...
You can also save a forest with places of ignition to re-use it in other simulations: click on MEMORISER button (MEMOIRE switch turn to ON). All next SETUP will drape the same forest until MEMOIRE switch is OFF.
Wind has 8 directions (DIRECTION_DOMINANTE chooser), FORCE (slider) from 1 to 10 and a DU_VENT? switch (if you want wind or not). Direction and Force are indicated by an arrow in the right corner of the multi-agent universe.
Click the MISE A FEU button to ignite fire. With the chooser IGNITION you can choose where the fire begin: a face of flames in N, E, S, W or what you want with the PONCTUELLE(s) choice. Click the GO button to start the simulation.
The fire can start from everywhere (from each side of the universe) or from point(s), and spreads to neighboring trees. The fire spreads in the height directions.
Because of wind, dryness, slope, orientation, the fire must not have trees along its path in order to advance.
- 1. Some kinds of trees (black patches) can explode and send embers to more or less long-distance according to the wind.
- 2. All these conditions can make the fire jumping over unwooded patches, in case it has enough power to do that (:dist in go procedure).
It is possible to import datasets like ELEVATION and FOREST: the model calculates slopes, orientations and a measurement of dryness.
References
For all no pedagogic uses of the model, please contact : Bonnefoy, Jean-Luc
To refer to this model in academic publications or courses, please quote: Bonnefoy, JL. (2007). NetLogo Incendie model. http://www.univ-provence.fr/bonnefoy. UMR 6012 ESPACE, CNRS Université Aix-Marseille 1 (France).
The SimFeFeu model is based on the Fire model developed at the MIT Media Lab. See Resnick, M. (1994) "Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds." Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Adapted to StarLogoT, 1998, as part of the Connected Mathematics Project. Adapted to NetLogo, 2001, as part of the Participatory Simulations Project.
Wilensky, U. (1998). NetLogo Fire model. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Fire. Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
A piece of dataset of another model called Grand Canyon Model has also been used for developing the SimFefeu model. The Grand Canyon Model presents a terrain on the eastern end of the Grand Canyon. Each patch represents an area of approximately 105 feet (32 m) on each side.
The elevation data comes from the National Elevation Dataset available at http://seamless.usgs.gov. It was converted from an ESRI Grid into an ASCII grid file using ArcGIS, then resampled to its current resolution and rescaled to lie in the range 0-999 using My World GIS.
Wilensky, U. (2006). NetLogo Grand Canyon model. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/GrandCanyon. Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.
This article last updated Wednesday 3 June 2009. by Jean-Luc Bonnefoy