Russo L., Vakalis D., Siettos C., 2013, Simulating the Wildfire in Rhodes in 2008 with a Cellular Automata Model, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 35, 1399-1404.
We demonstrate how a cellular automata modelling approach offers a suitable method to develop a real time simulator able to describe the evolution of a fire front on higlhy heterogeneous landscapes. Importantly, we show that, differently from other approaches like CFD simulations in the continuum, a micro-simulator based on a cellular automata can be used for real-time and mutil-time assessement as the computational time that takes to run a compete simulation is of orders of magnitude shorter than the time period during which a real fire incident develops. The model takes into account factors such as the type and density of vegetation, the wind speed and direction and the spotting phenomenon. The model is used to simulate the wildfire that destroyed part of Rhodes in July of 2008. The model parameters have not been adjusted to fit the real incident; they have been kept at the values used to simulate other large-scale wild fires such as the fires of Parnitha in 2008 (Alexandridis et al., 20011) and the fire in Spetses in 1990 (Alexandridis et al., 2008). The comparison between the simulation and the real data obtained from Geographical Information Systems (GIS) showed that the model predicts efficiently the spatio-temporal evolution of the real incident and as such could be potentially used to develop a risk-management tool for controlling and assess wildland forest fires in heterogeneous landscapes.
