Design and implementation of an integrated GIS-based cellular automata model to characterize forest fire behaviour

The integration of geographic information systems (GIS) and environmental modelling has been widely investigated for more than a decade. However, such integration has remained a challenging task due to the temporal changes of environmental processes and the static nature of GIS. This study integrates GIS and cellular automata (CA) techniques to develop a fire behaviour model with a flexible and user-friendly end-user interface. The developed model incorporates topographic, forest fuel and weather variables. The performance of the implemented fire model is evaluated by comparison with fire spread simulations derived from Prometheus, the national Canadian fire behaviour modelling tool based on elliptical wave propagation principles. The developed fire behaviour model was tested using spatial data from the 2001 Dogrib Fire near Nordegg Alberta, Canada. Results from the simulations of the CA and wave propagation spread models indicate comparable agreement. This study shows that the GIS-CA model can simulate realistic forest fire scenarios. The developed GIS-based modelling tool enables dynamic animation within the GIS interface. Further, this tool can be adapted to other CA-based spatio-temporal modelling applications.