Quantifying merging fire behaviour phenomena using unmanned aerial vehicle technology

Abstract

Catastrophic wildfires are often a result of dynamic fire behaviours. They can cause rapid escalation of fire behaviour, increasing the danger to ground-based emergency personnel. To date, few studies have characterised merging fire behaviours outside the laboratory. The aim of this study was to develop a simple, fast and accurate method to track fire front propagation using emerging technologies to quantify merging fire behaviour at the field scale. Medium-scale field experiments were conducted during April 2019 on harvested wheat fields in western Victoria, Australia. An unmanned aerial vehicle was used to capture high-definition video imagery of fire propagation. Twenty-one junction and f..