Abstract
The Fire ROS Calculator is a software tool built using MATLAB to assist researchers from the wildfire research area in analysing wildland fire behaviours. In particular, it measures the rate of spread (ROS) of a fire propagating over a surface in a laboratory setting and constructs its propagation contour map. An algorithm is used to calibrate the camera used for filming the fire spread. Various algorithms and image processing procedures are applied to the images to obtain the ROS. The software has a graphical user interface (GUI) and documentation stored in a GitHub repository alongside the source code. Funding statement: The software resulted from the funding of the Portuguese Science Foundation for the project “FIREWHIRL – Vorticity Effects in Forest Fires” (PTDC/EMS-ENE/2530/2014).
Highlights
ADAI/CEIF (Association for the development of Industrial Aerodynamics/Centre of Studies About Forest Fires), University of Coimbra, PT
The Fire ROS Calculator is a software tool built using MATLAB to assist researchers from the wildfire research area in analysing wildland fire behaviours. It measures the rate of spread (ROS) of a fire propagating over a surface in a laboratory setting and constructs its propagation contour map
The software has a graphical user interface (GUI) and documentation stored in a GitHub repository alongside the source code
Summary
ADAI/CEIF (Association for the development of Industrial Aerodynamics/Centre of Studies About Forest Fires), University of Coimbra, PT. The software has several tools that allow the user to perform the whole analysis process starting from a video or images of the fire and ending with several commonly-used outputs like dynamical or averaged fire’s ROS and the propagation contour map. The Dynamic ROS describes the fire’s spread rate dynamically with the time, which means the ROS that the fire has travelled with between every two frames along the defined direction by the user Both programs to calculate averaged and dynamic ROS have similar architecture. Two inputs are needed to run the program; first is the direction where the ROS will be calculated, which is input as a line that the user draws over the fire’s propagation contour map (Figure 5). The installer will download it from the internet and install it automatically if needed
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