A minimal model for the vegetation combustion in wildfire simulators

In this paper a semi-physical model for the vegetation burning in wildland fire is proposed. The model is developed with the final aim to simulate large scale wildland fires which spread on heterogeneous landscape. In a modular modelling approach, it can be seen as the cell model for a forest fire propagation tool to perform fast simulations for operational scope and fight fires interventions. It is constituted by a simple system of ordinary differential equations taking into account the main physico-chemical processes involved in the fire spreading while keeping the computation cost for simulations very low. Finally, the model is implemented in the modelling, at the intermediate scale (1 hectare), of the fire spreading in a homogeneous environment.