Radiative Transfer in Propagating Fire Front

3DFireLab has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie agreement, grant H2020-MSCA-IF-2019-892463.

News:

Coupling of DART and FDS

December 2022: A brief look at the work performed with the DART model on raditiative transfer modelling in scene simulated by the physically based fire model FDS..


OrthoIrCam Algorithm in on Github

December 2022: Code for image orthorectification from handheld aiborne Long Wave IR camera is available on Github..


IX international conference on Fores Fire Research

November 2022: I attended the IX ICFFR in Coimbra. As mentioned by others "A pasionate Week"...


Workshop on Experimental Fire Monitoring.

February 2022: a short notice regarding the organization of a workshop at UPC in September 2022..


Publication

December 2021: publication of my work on helicopter-borne infra red images orthorectification.


Numerical WildFire 2021 Conference

November 2021: I had the chance to be an invited speaker at the Numerical Wild Fire 2021 Conference in Cargese.


Drone test flight with an Optris P640 camera

July 2021: some news about a test flight we performed in summer 2021 with a drone from the Octocam company.


Project Presentation

February 2021: A video presenting 3DFireLab project.


Project Kick-off

October 2020: Setting up at CERTEC on the UPC campus of Barcelona for the next two years thanks to the support of an MSCA fellwoship.


Presentation:

3DFireLab is funded by a fellowship of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) from the H2020 Research program developed by the European Union.

Ronan Paugam was awarded this fellowship at the 2019 MSCA call to set up the project at CERTEC, an institution of the University Politecnia de Calatunia (UPC) led by Dr Elsa Pastor and Prof Eulalia Planas. French institution from Toulouse in France are also involved, namely, CERFACS and two labs (CESBIO and LA) from the university Paul Sabatier (UPS). (see partners list below)

3DfireLab aims to develop a simulation strategy to create a 3D virtual fire lab that can model radiative transfer in open landscape scale vegetation fire. The end objective is to help improving fire monitoring Earth Observation (EO) products.

botswana-1 botswana-2 Example of a fire observed by MODIS Terra over Botswana on the 8th of Oct 2003. Images show the true color composite image derived form MODIS RGB bands and the Middle Infra Red (MIR) band (3.9 mu). The green crosses on the later image show the fire hot spot detected by MODIS fire product. Also reported on the image are fire activity information estimated from EO products: plume height derived from PRM (Plume Rise Model), Fire Radiative Power (FRP), and Active Fire Aera (AFarea). See Paugam et al. 2015 for more info on these products.

3DfireLab builds on an initial system designed by Ronan Paugam during a previous European Space Agency project (run at Kings College London with Prof Martin Wooster), and the coupling of models of fire spread, atmospherics dynamics and radiative transfer developed by partners.

It takes opportunity of (a) the wide experience of CERTEC in fire monitoring and modeling, (b) recent efforts to improve atmospheric representation in radiative transfer model (CESBIO), fire effects in atmospheric model (LA), Machine Learning application in fire observation (CERFACS) and (c) Ronan’s experience in the fire remote sensing community.

Fire disturbance is parameterized in large scale atmospheric modeling (e.g. forecast model) via emission inventory based on EO products. A well-established approach is to use the Fire Radiative Power product (FRP) to estimate total fire energy emission and infer the associated fuel mass consumption and trace gas emission. So far, the conversion from emissive radiative energy to mass consumption is based on a linear relationship that has only been demonstrated for small scale fire and little evidence are currently present to validate it in the context of large-scale fire scenario.

The simulation strategy proposed in 3DFireLab aims to setup a tool able to study energy transfer in large-scale fires that will help us understand the roles of the flames and the plume to eventually evaluate their sensitivity in the fire emission FRP retrievals.

While project results have potential high application in the atmospheric community, the training organized with the host and the two partners will provide a wide range of expertise in atmospheric dynamics, radiative transfer, image processing, fire modeling, data science that will enrich partners activities in fire science.

Reference

  • Paugam, R., Wooster, M., Atherton, J., Freitas, S. R., Schultz, M. G., and Kaiser, J. W.: Development and optimization of a wildfire plume rise model based on remote sensing data inputs -Part 2, Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 15, 9815-9895, doi:10.5194/acpd-15-9815-2015, 2015.

Partners:

3DFireLab involes 4 partners located in Barcelona and Toulouse:

CERTEC at UPC:

UPC CERTEC (Centre d’Estudis del Risc Tecnològic) hosted is hosted at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). It was created in 1992 and is located at the new Diagonal Besòs Campus in Barcelona. CERTEC has a Wildfire Research Programme whose aim is to provide technological and scientific solutions for a sustainable cost-effective wildfire management. One specific objective of this Programme is to improve current wildfire airborne monitoring systems by optimizing infrared technology outcomes. CERTEC is the host of 3DFireLab. Ronan Paugam will work here with the help of Prof Elsa Pastor who has a strong experience in fire monitoriting and modelling and Prof Eulalia Planas, head of CERTEC, who is providing expertise in fire physical and chemical processes.

CESBIO & LA at UPS:

CESBIO CESBIO (Centre d’Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère ) is a french joint research unit attached to the Université Paul Sabatier (UPS) in Toulouse. Its research is axed on the functioning of continental surfaces and their interactions with climate and humans, relying heavily on satellite data. The group of Prof Jean Philippe Gastellu-Etchegorry which develops the radiative transfer model DART, is involved in 3DFireLab to provide experience in radiative transfer and support for the integration of fire scene in the DART model.

LA The Laboratoire d’Aérologie (LA) is joint research unit hosted at Université Paul Sabatier (UPS) in Toulouse. Its scientific activity aims to observe, model and understand the dynamic and physico-chemical processes that govern the evolution of the atmosphere and the coastal ocean. Prof Céline Mari is involved in 3DFireLab to support the atmospheric modelling development of the project, in particular through the MesoNH model.

CERFACS:

CERFACS Centre Européen de Recherche et de Formation Avancée en Calcul Scientifique (CERFACS) is a research institut specialized in modelling and numerical simulation, through its facilities and expertise in high-performance computing, deals with major scientific and technical research problems of public and industrial interest. CERFACS is based in Toulouse in the campus of Meteo France. CERFACS provides to 3DFireLab its expertise in fire spread modelling and in machine learning thanks to the support of the two groups of Dr Melanie Rochoux (FIREFLY) and Dr Corentin Lapeyre (HELIOS).

Publications:

Peer-reviewed:

  1. Paugam, Ronan, Martin J. Wooster, William E. Mell, Mélanie C. Rochoux, Jean-Baptiste Filippi, Gernot Rücker, Olaf Frauenberger, Eckehard Lorenz, Wilfrid Schroeder, Bruce Main, and Navashni Govender. 2021. “Orthorectification of Helicopter-Borne High Resolution Experimental Burn Observation from Infra Red Handheld Imagers” Remote Sensing 13, no. 23: 4913. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13234913
  2. Paugam Ronan et al. High Resolution Fire Behavior Monitoring and Plume Simulation in the context of Experimental Fire. In Proc. of the IX International Congress on Forest Fire Research (ICFFR) 2022 edited by Viegas, D. X., Coimbra, Portugal. http://dx.doi.org/10.14195/978-989-26-2298-9

Conferences:

  1. Ronan Paugam, Nicolas Lauret, Jean-Philippe Gastellu-Etchegorry, Elsa Pastor, Eulalia Planas. 3DFireLab: a Virtual Fire Scene Simulator for the Simulation of Infra Red Fire Observation. 13th IAFSS Symposium, Waterloo CA, 26-30 April 2021.
  2. Ronan Paugam, Melanie Rochoux, Nicolas Cazard, Corentin Lapeyre, Jean-Baptiste Vincentelli, Jean-Baptiste Filippi, William Mell, Joshua Johnston, Martin Wooster. High Resolution Fire Behavior Monitoring & Plume Simulation in the context of Prescribed Burns. Numerical WildFire 2021, IESC Cargese France, 15-19 November 2021 .

Outreach:

  1. Participation to the organization of a prescribed fire organized in the context of the GUARDIAN project. Meeting with fire practitioners, including first responders and fire risk managers from the area of Valencia (02/2022).
  2. Seminars at the “1. Seminars at the “Fire Engineering” undergraduate inter-disciplinary elective course of EEBE (Barcelona East School of Engineering (04/2022).
  3. Seminars at the “Risk Analysis course” master and PhD course of EEBE (Barcelona East School of Engineering (06/2022).

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