CEE Seminar: Advances, Challenges and Opportunities in Coupled Wildland Fire Simulations

McDonnell Douglas Engineering Auditorium
Branko Kosović, Ph.D.

Director for Weather Systems and Assessment Program
Program Manager for Renewable Energy
Research Applications Laboratory
National Center for Atmospheric Research

Abstract: Over recent decades, wildland fires worldwide have increased in magnitude. Commensurate with their magnitude, the impact of wildland fires on the environment, infrastructure, communities and health has also increased. Wildland fires result from complex interactions among a multitude of physical processes, including those associated with weather, combustion, hydrology and the biosphere. Characterizing and parameterizing these processes and their interactions is required for effective coupled atmosphere wildfire behavior simulations. Such simulations can be an important tool in developing a better understanding of wildland fire spread and can be indispensable for prediction and risk assessment and thus aid in wildfire preparedness and response. Due to complexity of wildland fires, developing effective coupled simulations requires a transdisciplinary approach.

Recently, significant advances have been made in coupled wildland fire simulations. These advances have been facilitated by advances in computational platforms, weather modeling, data collection and data assimilation. The presentation will discuss how some of these advances are implemented in the Weather Research and Forecasting – Fire (WRF-Fire) model. The advances include multiscale modeling, accurate fire front tracking, accurate information about fuel properties, including high-resolution fuel moisture data, firebrand transport and smoke transport. The impact of these developments will be demonstrated based on simulations of recent fires in Colorado.

The challenges for wildland fire simulations stem from incomplete knowledge of the processes controlling wildland fire spread, the lack of quality-controlled data, and compounded uncertainties due to environmental conditions and fuel characteristics. Considering the potential role of wildland fire simulations in decision making, there are needs and opportunities for further enhancement of wildland fire prediction. Improving coupled wildland fire simulations requires a new rate of spread model that accounts for convective heating through contact with flames and interactions with atmospheric background flow. The new model should be based on extensive observations of wildland fires, complete with quality controlled and standardized data. Such data can then be used for validation of coupled wildland fire models based on a set of well-defined test cases. Achieving this goal will require a dedicated effort of scientific community from all the relevant disciplines as well as engagement of stakeholders.

Bio: Kosović is the director of the Weather Systems and Assessment Program and the program manager for Renewable Energy for the Research Applications Laboratory. He joined NCAR in 2009 after seven years at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado (1996), M.S. degree in aerospace engineering from Penn State University (1991), and B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Rijeka, Croatia (1988). Kosović’s expertise is in boundary layer meteorology with a focus on high-resolution simulations of boundary layer flows. He has been involved in research and development activities in atmospheric transport and dispersion, turbulence simulations and modeling for renewable energy applications. He has also worked on inverse problems using nonlinear optimization and Bayesian inference with stochastic sampling. Kosović is currently working on extending multiscale modeling capabilities in numerical weather prediction models for wind and solar energy and wildland fire prediction applications.