FORFIS: A forest fire firefighting simulation tool for education and research

TL;DR

FORFIS is a Python-based, user-friendly wildfire simulation tool with customizable firefighting strategies, supporting educational and research purposes through a GUI and cellular automata models that incorporate wind effects.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible, easy-to-modify wildfire simulation software with a focus on usability and customization, unlike existing tools.

Findings

Supports both rectangular and hexagonal cellular automata models

Includes wind effects in wildfire simulation

Allows easy integration of customized firefighting strategies

Abstract

We present a forest fire firefighting simulation tool named FORFIS that is implemented in Python. Unlike other existing software, we focus on a user-friendly software interface with an easy-to-modify software engine. Our tool is published under GNU GPLv3 license and comes with a GUI as well as additional output functionality. The used wildfire model is based on the well-established approach by cellular automata in two variants - a rectangular and a hexagonal cell decomposition of the wildfire area. The model takes wind into account. In addition, our tool allows the user to easily include a customized firefighting strategy for the firefighting agents.