Skip to content

fix(propagation): Rothermel wind exponent E uses 3.59e-4, not 10E-4 - #195

Open
3dfirelab wants to merge 1 commit into
forefireAPI:masterfrom
3dfirelab:fix/rothermel-wind-exponent
Open

3dfirelab wants to merge 1 commit into
forefireAPI:masterfrom
3dfirelab:fix/rothermel-wind-exponent

Conversation

@3dfirelab

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Contributor

Rothermel (1972) gives E = 0.715 exp(-3.59e-4 sigma) with sigma in 1/ft. In C++ "10E-4" is 10 x 10^-4 = 1e-3, so E was ~10x too small (SH5: 0.058 instead of 0.556) and the wind factor phi_w = C U^B (beta/beta_op)^-E ~4x too small for shrub fuels. RothermelAndrews2018.cpp and FarsitePropagationModel.cpp already use 3.59e-4.

Calibrations made with the previous value (propagationSpeedAdjustmentFactor, windReductionFactor) need to be revisited.

Rothermel (1972) gives E = 0.715 exp(-3.59e-4 sigma) with sigma in 1/ft.
In C++ "10E-4" is 10 x 10^-4 = 1e-3, so E was ~10x too small (SH5:
0.058 instead of 0.556) and the wind factor phi_w = C U^B (beta/beta_op)^-E
~4x too small for shrub fuels. RothermelAndrews2018.cpp and
FarsitePropagationModel.cpp already use 3.59e-4.

Calibrations made with the previous value (propagationSpeedAdjustmentFactor,
windReductionFactor) need to be revisited.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

This branch has not been deployed

No deployments
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

1 participant