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Wildfires and Climate Change: Physics-Based Modelling of Fire Spread in a Changing World

Description du projet

De nouveaux outils pour la prévision et la gestion des incendies de forêt

Le changement climatique affecte l’humidité et les températures, rendant les incendies de forêt incontrôlés plus fréquents et plus graves. Ils menacent par ailleurs de plus en plus les habitations et les infrastructures, en particulier là où les zones urbaines rencontrent des espaces sauvages. Malgré leur impact, nous ne comprenons toujours pas bien comment les incendies se propagent, ce qui complique la prévision et la mise en œuvre d’une gestion efficace. Le projet FIREMOD, financé par le CER, vise à combler cette lacune. Plus précisément, il s’agira de créer un modèle physique détaillé pour mieux comprendre et prévoir le comportement des feux de forêt. Le projet les étudiera à différentes échelles, inclura les effets de la combustion lente et améliorera les modèles d’incendie à petite et grande échelle. Cette approche permettra de gérer plus efficacement les incendies de forêt et fournira des outils précieux aux chercheurs.

Objectif

Fire has long been a ubiquitous and essential part of the global environment, as many ecosystems and societal life fundamentally depend on fire. Despite this, we still lack a fundamental theory of fire spread, which becomes crucial in a changing world if we want to understand and predict the occurrence of uncontrolled fires. Uncontrolled fires are a global phenomena that are becoming commonplace as changes in moisture and local temperature driven by climate change affect local fuel properties and ecosystems. As we construct more housing and industry in areas that were previously wildlands, the Wildland-Urban Interface becomes more critical as wildfires now affect infrastructure and urban systems.

The societal, scientific, and engineering problem of uncontrolled fires is a complex one: it requires the harmonisation of both engineering and environmental science methods, including combustion engineering, real time modelling, data assimilation and management, and the development of techniques that can adequately support the needs of fire management.

The aim of this proposal is ambitious, but essential to understand and predict the occurrence of uncontrolled fires: We need a fundamental physical model to understand the process of fire spread. It needs to be validated, and it needs to work for all conditions and fuel types. We will develop this physical model focusing on three different methods, in parallel:
i) Study fire across temporal and spatial scales to understand changing fire regimes, including vegetation dynamics.
ii) Understanding of fire on multiple scales will help with scaling up from small-scale fine mesh models to much larger grid sizes.
iii) Integrate the effect of smouldering combustion into modelling of fire spread.
The scientific outcomes of our work will ensure that there is a fundamental step-change in the approach of modelling wildfire ignition and spread, with the proposed methodology and tools then widely available for scientists to adapt.

Champ scientifique (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classe les projets avec EuroSciVoc, une taxonomie multilingue des domaines scientifiques, grâce à un processus semi-automatique basé sur des techniques TLN.

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Régime de financement

HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

Institution d’accueil

KING'S COLLEGE LONDON
Contribution nette de l'UE
€ 1 480 466,00
Adresse
STRAND
WC2R 2LS London
Royaume-Uni

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Type d’activité
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Liens
Coût total
€ 1 480 466,00

Bénéficiaires (1)