A review of wildland fire spread modelling, 1990-present, 1: Physical and quasi-physical models

TL;DR

This review comprehensively examines physical and quasi-physical models of wildland fire spread developed since 1990, focusing on physics-based approaches grounded in combustion chemistry and physics, highlighting advances and extensions over previous models.

Contribution

It provides a detailed critical review of physical and quasi-physical wildland fire spread models developed since 1990, emphasizing their scientific basis and evolution.

Findings

Models are based on combustion physics and chemistry.

Many models are extensions of pre-1990 frameworks.

The review highlights recent advances in physical modeling techniques.

Abstract

In recent years, advances in computational power and spatial data analysis (GIS, remote sensing, etc) have led to an increase in attempts to model the spread and behaviour of wildland fires across the landscape. This series of review papers endeavours to critically and comprehensively review all types of surface fire spread models developed since 1990. This paper reviews models of a physical or quasi-physical nature. These models are based on the fundamental chemistry and/or physics of combustion and fire spread. Other papers in the series review models of an empirical or quasi-empirical nature, and mathematical analogues and simulation models. Many models are extensions or refinements of models developed before 1990. Where this is the case, these models are also discussed but much less comprehensively.