Scintilla: Simulating Combustible Vegetation for Wildfires

Authors: Andrzej Kokosza ¹       Helge Wrede²       Daniel Gonzalez Esparza³       Milosz Makowski¹       Daoming Lu³      
Dominik L. Michels³       Sören Pirk²       Wojtek Pałubicki¹      

¹AMU, Poland
²CAU, Germany
³KAUST, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Wildfires are a complex physical phenomenon that involves the combustion of a variety of flammable materials ranging from fallen leaves and dried twigs to decomposing organic material and living flora. All these materials can potentially act as fuel with different properties that determine the progress and severity of a wildfire. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for simulating the dynamic interaction between the varying components of a wildfire, including processes of convection, combustion and heat transfer between vegetation, soil and atmosphere. We propose a novel representation of vegetation that includes detailed branch geometry, fuel moisture, and distribution of grass, fine fuel, and duff. Furthermore, we model the ignition, generation, and transport of fire by firebrands and embers. This allows simulating and rendering virtual 3D wildfires that realistically capture key aspects of the process, such as progressions from ground to crown fires, the impact of embers carried by wind, and the effects of fire barriers and other human intervention methods. We evaluate our approach through numerous experiments and based on comparisons to real-world wildfire data.

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Bibtex

@article{Kokosza:2024:Scintilla,
  author    = {A. Kokosza, H. Wrede, D. G. Esparza, M. Makowski, D. Liu, 
               D. L. Michels, D. Pirk, W. Palubicki},
  title     = {Scintilla: Simulating Combustible Vegetation for Wildfires},
  journal   = {ACM Transaction on Graphics},
  year      = {2024},
  month     = {},
  volume    = {},
  number    = {},
  doi       = {},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address   = {New York, NY, USA}
}