Environment
Fight
Fire with Film Forecast
By Clifton Coles
emote-sensing technologies will make extinguishing wildfires quicker and easier.
Data from sensors will translate into computer animation to better visualize predicted
fire behavior. Researchers from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) predict that
future firefighters will be able to manage wildfires electronically.
The research is twofold: to collect real-time data using airborne and
ground-based sensors and to use computer animation to visualize paths a fire might follow.
In between these steps is a unique model, created by Janice Coen at the National Center
for Atmospheric Research, that forms the core of the project. Information is fed into the
model and combined with weather data from the U.S. Forest Service.
The model outputs a three-dimensional movie about the fire that is
sophisticated enough to predict dangerous fire behaviors, such as leaping flames.
"Coen's model can track smoke and hot gases in the
atmosphere," says Anthony Vodacek, who heads RIT's Forest Fire Imaging Experimental
System. His team will create synthetic scenes of fires to visualize live blazes based on
Coen's model, which will tell them where flames will be in any particular situation.
"Essentially, a little movie will be generated," says Vodacek.
"In the end, the goal is to make it look real to the fire manager."
Data from Coen's model can be transferred to a computer anywhere and
sent back to the field. The fire could be in Montana and the computer in Georgia, Vodacek
notes. Fire managers will use a laptop computer to watch how the fire is predicted to
behave for about an hour.
"By the time it takes to collect the data, run it through the
model, and send it back to the field, it may be 15 minutes old," said Vodacek.
"But, still, that gives you a 45-minute outlook, potentially."
Vodacek expects to demonstrate the system in four years.
Source: Rochester Institute of Technology, University News Services, 132
Lomb Memorial Drive, Building 86, Rochester, New York 14623. Web site www.rit.edu.
