Local-scale modelling system to simulate smoke dispersion
Joana Valente A C , Ana I. Miranda A , António G. Lopes B , Carlos Borrego A , Domingos X. Viegas B and Myriam Lopes A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A CESAM & Department of Environment and Planning, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal.
B Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Coimbra, Pólo II, Pinhal de Marrocos, 3030-201 Coimbra, Portugal.
C Corresponding author. Email: joanavalente@dao.ua.pt
International Journal of Wildland Fire 16(2) 196-203 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF06085
Published: 30 April 2007
Abstract
The main purpose of this paper is to present a fire behaviour system, developed to estimate fire progression, smoke dispersion and visibility impairment, at a local scale, and to evaluate its performance by comparing results with measurements from the Gestosa 2004 experimental field fires. The system is an improvement of two already available numerical tools, DISPERFIRE (Miranda et al. 1994) and FireStation (Lopes et al. 2002), which were integrated. FireStation is a software system aimed at the simulation of fire spread over complex topography. DISPERFIRE is a real-time system developed to simulate the dispersion in the atmosphere of the pollutants emitted during a forest fire. In addition, a model for the estimation of visibility impairment, based on the relationship between air pollutants concentration and visibility, was included in DISPERFIRE. The whole system was developed using a graphical interface, previously created for FireStation, which provides user-friendliness and easily readable output to facilitate its application under operational conditions. The system was applied to an experimental field fire and the main results were compared with experimental air pollutant concentration measured values. The performance of the model in predicting pollutant concentrations was good, particularly for NO2 and PM10.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the European Commission, under the framework of SPREAD project (EVGI-2001-00027), EUFIRELAB project (EVR1-CT-2002-40028) and INTERFACE project (POCI/AMB/60660/2004), and all their colleagues from the University of Aveiro who participated in this work.
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