Predicting Historical Fires with HFire and FARSITE
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How do you test predictions of fire spread?
One way to test the accuracy of a predictive model of fire spread is to reconstruct
a historical fire and compare the observed historical fire spread to the predicted fire spread. Data showing
the fire's growth at a specific interval in time, oftentimes acquired using a helicopter equipped with a GPS,
provides the requisite observations for comparison. A reconstruction of two historical Southern California
wildfires, the 1996 Calabasas Fire and the 1998 Ogilvy Fire, was performed to assess the accuracy of
predictions made using the FARSITE and HFire fire spread models. FARSITE, developed by Dr. Mark A. Finney,
is the current US standard operational model of fire spread. HFire, developed by Marco Morais at UCSB, is
an experimental model of surface fire spread through (Southern California) chaparral fuels.
Read More About HFire
1996 Calabasas Fire
The 1996 Calabasas Fire was a Santa Ana-driven fire which burned a total of 5159 hectares
in the Santa Monica Mountains, California. The fire was actively spreading from the time it started along the
101 freeway on October 21 at 1100 hours until it was contained sometime during the late morning on October
22. The weather conditions under which the fire spread, an average windspeed of 14.3 m/s (32 miles/hr) was
measured by a local RAWS at 1100 hours, and consequent fire behavior are representative of an extreme fire event.
Fuels Data Used |
Data Resolution |
Weather Data Used |
URL |
custom fuels |
30 meter |
Cheesbro RAWS station |
link |
custom fuels |
30 meter |
Malibu RAWS station |
link |
custom fuels |
100 meter |
Cheesbro RAWS station |
link |
custom fuels |
100 meter |
Malibu RAWS station |
link |
NFFL fuels |
30 meter |
Cheesbro RAWS station |
link |
NFFL fuels |
30 meter |
Malibu RAWS station |
link |
NFFL fuels |
100 meter |
Cheesbro RAWS station |
link |
NFFL fuels |
100 meter |
Malibu RAWS station |
link |
Fuels Data Used |
Data Resolution |
Weather Data Used |
URL |
custom fuels |
30 meter |
Cheesbro RAWS station |
link |
custom fuels |
30 meter |
Malibu RAWS station |
link |
custom fuels |
100 meter |
Cheesbro RAWS station |
link |
custom fuels |
100 meter |
Malibu RAWS station |
link |
NFFL fuels |
30 meter |
Cheesbro RAWS station |
link |
NFFL fuels |
30 meter |
Malibu RAWS station |
link |
NFFL fuels |
100 meter |
Cheesbro RAWS station |
link |
NFFL fuels |
100 meter |
Malibu RAWS station |
link |
1998 Ogilvy Fire
Unlike the Calabasas Fire, the 1998 Ogilvy Fire burned in the mountains of Ventura
County, California under far more moderate weather conditions. The Ogilvy Fire was actively spreading for
161 hours, from the time of ignition on October 16 at 1500 hours until October 23 at 0800 hours. During this
span, 1714 hectares, almost exclusively consisting of chaparral, were consumed by the fire. This represents
less than half of the area consumed by the Calabasas Fire during the first 10 hours of spread. As a result,
fire behavior during the Ogilvy Fire is representative of a more moderate fire event.
Fuels Data Used |
Data Resolution |
Weather Data Used |
URL |
custom fuels |
30 meter |
Los Prietos and Ojai RAWS stations |
link |
custom fuels |
100 meter |
Los Prietos and Ojai RAWS stations |
link |
NFFL fuels |
30 meter |
Los Prietos and Ojai RAWS stations |
link |
NFFL fuels |
100 meter |
Los Prietos and Ojai RAWS stations |
link |
Fuels Data Used |
Data Resolution |
Weather Data Used |
URL |
custom fuels |
30 meter |
Los Prietos and Ojai RAWS stations |
link |
custom fuels |
100 meter |
Los Prietos and Ojai RAWS stations |
link |
NFFL fuels |
30 meter |
Los Prietos and Ojai RAWS stations |
link |
NFFL fuels |
100 meter |
Los Prietos and Ojai RAWS stations |
link |
Last Updated: Marco Morais