@article{10.1145/3450626.3459954,
author = {H\"{a}drich, Torsten and Banuti, Daniel T. and Pa\l{}ubicki, Wojtek and Pirk, S\"{o}ren and Michels, Dominik L.},
title = {Fire in Paradise: Mesoscale Simulation of Wildfires},
year = {2021},
issue_date = {August 2021},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
volume = {40},
number = {4},
issn = {0730-0301},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3450626.3459954},
doi = {10.1145/3450626.3459954},
abstract = {Resulting from changing climatic conditions, wildfires have become an existential
threat across various countries around the world. The complex dynamics paired with
their often rapid progression renders wildfires an often disastrous natural phenomenon
that is difficult to predict and to counteract. In this paper we present a novel method
for simulating wildfires with the goal to realistically capture the combustion process
of individual trees and the resulting propagation of fires at the scale of forests.
We rely on a state-of-the-art modeling approach for large-scale ecosystems that enables
us to represent each plant as a detailed 3D geometric model. We introduce a novel
mathematical formulation for the combustion process of plants - also considering effects
such as heat transfer, char insulation, and mass loss - as well as for the propagation
of fire through the entire ecosystem. Compared to other wildfire simulations which
employ geometric representations of plants such as cones or cylinders, our detailed
3D tree models enable us to simulate the interplay of geometric variations of branching
structures and the dynamics of fire and wood combustion. Our simulation runs at interactive
rates and thereby provides a convenient way to explore different conditions that affect
wildfires, ranging from terrain elevation profiles and ecosystem compositions to various
measures against wildfires, such as cutting down trees as firebreaks, the application
of fire retardant, or the simulation of rain.},
journal = {ACM Trans. Graph.},
month = jul,
articleno = {163},
numpages = {15},
keywords = {wildfires, level of detail, physics-based modeling, combustion, fluid dynamics, numerical simulation, fire}
}