Ph.D. Research Profile: Colin Simpson
Numerical modelling of wildland fire-atmosphere interactions and their impacts on fire behaviour
Contact Details
Room:
Phone: +64 3 364 2987 ext.
Fax: +64 3 364 2907
Email: ccs49@uclive.ac.nz
Postal address: Center for Atmospheric Research, Department of Geography, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand
Research Overview
Wildfires are a natural phenomena essential to the maintenance of various types of ecosystems, such as grasslands and forests. However, under certain conditions a small intensity wildland fire has the potential to develop into a severe wildfire, which is characterised by both rapid spread and high intensity. A severe wildfire can cause significant damage to the environment and can endanger human life. Australia has experienced many devastating wildfires in recent years, particularly the Black Saturday fires in February 2009 which killed 173 people. It is the responsibility of land and fire management agencies in affected countries to mitigate these negative impacts of wildfires through four principal objectives: reduction, readiness, response and recovery. The response component of fire management aims to use firefighting resources to respond to, control and extinguish severe wildfires before they cause extended damage to people and the environment.
A wildfire can be defined as the uncontrolled combustion of vegetation in a wildland area, where this combustion is a highly complex process. Overall wildfire behaviour is also dependent on three external influences, which together comprise the fire environment: topography, fuel and weather. The resulting interplay between wildfire behaviour and fire environment conditions typically result in highly nonlinear wildfire behaviour. The interactions between wildfire behaviour and the surrounding atmosphere are of particular interest due to the highly variable nature of atmospheric conditions and the strong coupling between them.
This research aims to develop a coupled wildfire-atmosphere model capable of investigating various wildfire-atmosphere interaction processes. For example, such a model could be used to investigate the generation of convective plumes by a wildfire, which can strongly modify the local atmospheric flow, temperature and stability. Wildfires also generate significant vorticity which can cause sudden highly localised rapid wildfire spread, posing dangers to firefighters. The extent of coupling between wildfire behaviour and atmospheric conditions can also be tested using sensitivity studies for various different wildfire scenarios.
An improved understanding of wildfire-atmosphere interactions will bring significant benefits to the fire management community. Due to the complexity of wildfire systems, current operational models are simplistic empirical models which determine fire spread rates using basic fire environment information. More detailed coupled wildfire-atmosphere models have the capacity to provide fire management with better predictions of future wildfire behaviour, thus improving firefighting effectiveness and safety.