Design of a FOSS GIS tool for wildfire spread simulation, fire supression resource management and risk analysis

Abstract

Wildfire simulation require of many geographical and georeferenced datasets. Integrating all of the processes for simulation into a GIS seems natural, but most of the solutions available are closed source, do not use standards and can’t be arranged or modified to cover new requirements such as the integration of fire suppression activities into a fire spread simulator. GisFire is an under development open source tool integrated into QGIS that uses the standard OGC formats, uses GIS APIs and provides a set of APIs and procedures to interact with a fire spread simulator. The GisFire APIs also provides a set of tools to evaluate different fire spread simulators, different fire suppression resources management policies and strategies and evaluate personal or economical risks. This poster presents the design of the fire spread simulation tool integrated into QGIS to focus research into wildfire simulation and analysis.