Simulation of the 2009 Harmanli fire (Bulgaria)

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a coupled atmosphere-fire simulation of the 2009 Harmanli fire in Bulgaria, utilizing detailed GIS and satellite data, and highlights the model's accuracy and computational efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces an extended WRF-Fire model with high-resolution capabilities for simulating large wildfires using real incident data.

Findings

Model accurately reproduces fire behavior with fine spatial resolution.

Simulation runs faster than real time on a cluster.

Model is publicly available for further research.

Abstract

We use a coupled atmosphere-fire model to simulate a fire that occurred on August 14--17, 2009, in the Harmanli region, Bulgaria. Data was obtained from GIS and satellites imagery, and from standard atmospheric data sources. Fuel data was classified in the 13 Anderson categories. For correct fire behavior, the spatial resolution of the models needed to be fine enough to resolve the essential micrometeorological effects. The simulation results are compared to available incident data. The code runs faster than real time on a cluster. The model is available from openwfm.org and it extends WRF-Fire from WRF 3.3 release.