Standard Tier Module
Boltzmann Wildfire (Rothermel-calibrated spread)
Physics-based wildfire spread calibrated to the published Rothermel rate-of-spread, in your browser.
See it run - a worked example, 100% in this browser tab
The problem
Operational fire predictors like FARSITE and WRF-Fire demand full fuel-map rasters, assimilated weather, and per-incident calibration that most teams cannot stand up for a quick what-if.
The local-first solution
This plugin runs a statistical-mechanics spread model whose cell-to-cell rates are calibrated to the published Rothermel surface rate-of-spread, entirely in the browser, optionally reflecting current public Open-Meteo weather at a lat/lon. Nothing is uploaded.
What it does
Boltzmann/Glauber spin-lattice fire spread on an N x N grid
Cell transition rates calibrated to Rothermel (1972) surface RoS
Anderson FM1/FM3 single dead-class grass fuel models plus a custom fuel
Optional live current weather from Open-Meteo (no API key) at a lat/lon
Emergent front speed measured against the Rothermel RoS band for the trust verdict
Percolation transition: burned fraction vs ignition probability with wind/slope off
Honest scope
Exact where the simple Rothermel equations are exact (single dead-class grass models); the RoS validation sits in the documented 50-200% band. This is a bridge-work what-if model, not an operational FARSITE/WRF-Fire replacement, makes no thermodynamic-hardware or speedup claims, and live runs depend on an upstream feed at the moment you run.
Authorities cited
- Rothermel, R. C. (1972). A Mathematical Model for Predicting Fire Spread in Wildland Fuels. USDA Forest Service Research Paper INT-116.
- Albini, F. A. (1976). Estimating Wildfire Behavior and Effects. USDA FS Gen. Tech. Rep. INT-30 (the reformulated Rothermel coefficients used here).
- Anderson, H. E. (1982). Aids to Determining Fuel Models for Estimating Fire Behavior. USDA FS GTR INT-122 (NFFL fuel models FM1/FM3).
- Drossel, B. & Schwabl, F. (1992). Self-organized criticality in a forest-fire model. Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 1629 (the spin/percolation lineage).
- Stauffer, D. & Aharony, A. (1994). Introduction to Percolation Theory (site-percolation transition).
- Open-Meteo (open-meteo.com) - free, no-API-key weather API used for live consumption.
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Run a calibrated spread scenario
Run a Rothermel-calibrated what-if in the browser and save the structured result to Sandbox, attach it to a Worklog case, or route it into a Gate client portal. Nothing leaves your machine to anyone's cloud.