RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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A high-fidelity ensemble simulation framework for interrogating wildland-fire behaviour and benchmarking machine learning models

Qing Wang

^A ^* , Matthias Ihme ^A ^B ^C , Cenk Gazen ^A , Yi-Fan Chen ^A and John Anderson ^A

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.

^B Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

^C Department of Photon Science, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA.

^* Correspondence to: wqing@google.com

International Journal of Wildland Fire 33, WF24097 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF24097

Submitted: 12 June 2024 Accepted: 24 October 2024 Published: 22 November 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of IAWF. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).

Abstract

Background

Wildfire research uses ensemble methods to analyse fire behaviours and assess uncertainties. Nonetheless, current research methods are either confined to simple models or complex simulations with limitations. Modern computing tools could allow for efficient, high-fidelity ensemble simulations.

Aims

This study proposes a high-fidelity ensemble wildfire simulation framework for studying wildfire behaviour, assessing fire risks, analysing uncertainties, and training machine learning (ML) models.

Methods

We present a simulation framework that integrates the Swirl-Fire large-eddy simulation tool for wildfire predictions with the Vizier optimisation platform for automated run-time management of ensemble simulations and large-scale batch processing. All simulations are executed on tensor-processing units to enhance computational efficiency.

Key results

A dataset of 117 simulations is created, each with 1.35 billion mesh points. The simulations are compared to existing experimental data and show good agreement in terms of fire rate of spread. Analysis is performed for fire acceleration, mean rate of spread, and fireline intensity.

Conclusions

Strong coupling between wind speed and slope is observed for fire-spread rate and intermittency. A critical Froude number that delineates fires from plume-dominated to wind-dominated is identified and confirmed with literature observations.

Implications

The ensemble simulation framework is efficient in facilitating large-scale parametric wildfire studies.

Keywords: ensemble simulations, fire propagation, fire/atmospheric coupling, large-eddy simulation, tensor processing units, TensorFlow, wildfire modelling, wildland fire prediction.

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