A hybrid agent-cellular space modeling approach for fire spread and suppression simulation

This paper presents a first effort to integrate DEVS-based cellular space models with agent models using dynamic structure DEVS for the simulation of forest fire spread and suppression. The main focus is on the interaction between mobile agents (such as fire fighters, air-tankers) and forest cells. DEVS models´ dynamic structure modeling capability is applied where couplings between mobile agents and forest cells are dynamically added and removed when the agents move in the cellular space. Two methods, a time-based method and an event-based method, are discussed to update a mobile agent´s position in a cellular space. A system architecture is presented and a prototype fire spread and suppression example is implemented. Based on this initial work, we hope to understand more about the nature of this hybrid agent-cellular space approach and to apply it to the modeling and simulation of forest fires and other ecological applications.