Fire propagation visualization in real time

SIGFRIDO WAIDELICH; KARINA LANERI; MONICA DENHAM

La Plata

Congreso; VI Jornadas de Cloud Computing & Big Data,; 2018

Universidad Nacional de La Plata

Our motivation comes from the need of a tailored com-putational tool for simulation and prediction of forestfire propagation, to be used by firefighters in Patago-nia, Argentina. Based on previous works on GraphicProcessing Units (GPU) for fitting and simulating firesin our region, we developed a visualization interfacefor real time computing, simulation and prediction offire propagation. We have the possibility of changingthe ensemble of raster maps layers to change the re-gion in which fire will propagate. The visualizationplatform runs on GPUs and the user can rotate andzoom the landscape to select the optimal view of firepropagation. Opacity of different layers can be regu-lated by the user, allowing to see fire propagation at thesame time that underlying vegetation, wind directionand intensity. The ignition point can also be selectedby the user, and firebreaks can be plotted while sim-ulation is going on. After the performance of a highnumber of stochastic simulations in parallel in GPUs,the application shows a map of the final fire surfacecolored according to the probability that a given cellburns. In this way the user can visually identify themost critical direction for fire propagation, a usefulinformation to stop fire optimizing resources, whichis specially important when they are scarce like is thecase of our Patagonia region.