HexFire: A Flexible and Accessible Wildfire Simulator

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Environmental Science
• Computational Science

Background:

• Wildfire frequency and severity are increasing globally.
• Existing wildfire simulators are often complex, time-consuming, and difficult to parameterize.
• This presents a barrier for scientists and practitioners outside of fire specialization.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce HexFire, a parsimonious wildfire simulator.
• Design HexFire for rapid adoption by non-fire specialists.
• Facilitate the integration of wildfire dynamics into broader ecological research.

Main Methods:

• Developed a simplified wildfire simulator, HexFire.
• Detailed the simulator's design and underlying mechanisms.
• Utilized heuristic examples to demonstrate fire spread and behavior generation.

Main Results:

• HexFire effectively represents fire spread and interactions with fuel breaks.
• The simulator can generate diverse emergent fire behaviors.
• HexFire demonstrates flexibility for coupling with other environmental models.

Conclusions:

• HexFire provides a practical tool for non-specialists to incorporate wildfire modeling.
• It serves as a proxy for more complex simulators, aiding ecological impact assessments.
• HexFire can simulate interactions with fuel breaks and fire suppression efforts.